“Justice and truth are too such subtle points that our tools are too blunt to touch them accurately.”
- June 19, 1623 – August 19, 1662
- French
- Mathematician, Physicist, Inventor, Philosopher, Theologian
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Quote
“Justice and truth are too such subtle points that our tools are too blunt to touch them accurately.”
Explanation
Pascal emphasizes the profound difficulty of grasping ultimate concepts like justice and truth with precision, due to the limitations of human faculties. Our tools—reason, language, perception, and law—are too coarse to fully capture or apply these ideals without distortion. As a result, our judgments are always approximate, partial, and vulnerable to error, even when made with good intentions.
In Pensées, Pascal frequently explores the imperfection of human understanding and the elusive nature of moral and philosophical absolutes. He believed that while truth and justice exist, they are often beyond the reach of our finite minds, which are shaped by bias, custom, and emotion. What we call justice may be little more than what is legally or culturally accepted, and what we call truth may still be shadowed by misunderstanding or illusion.
In today’s world of legal systems, political ideologies, and truth claims, Pascal’s quote remains deeply relevant. Even our most advanced institutions and arguments often fall short of true justice or complete truth, because the concepts themselves are infinitely complex and shaped by context. His insight calls us to practice humility in judgment, to recognize the limits of our tools, and to strive for justice and truth with awareness of their subtlety—and our own fallibility.
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