Truth on this side of the Pyrenees, error on the…
Quote
Truth on this side of the Pyrenees, error on the other.
Original text
Vérité au deçà des Pyrénées, erreur au delà.
The story behind this quote
The phrase appears in the Pensées, in the middle of a reflection on human justice. Pascal is astonished that everyone is content to follow “the customs of his country”: true equity would be the same everywhere, whereas “three degrees of latitude overturn the whole of jurisprudence” and “a meridian decides what is true”. Just before the sentence, he exclaims: “A fine justice that a river bounds!” Just after it, he notes that men invoke natural laws without being able to find a single one that is universal.
Here Pascal takes up a remark by Montaigne, who marvelled in the Essays at a truth that mountains bound and that becomes a lie on the other side. But where Montaigne is amused by it, Pascal sees in it the wretchedness of man, unable to found justice without God.
The Pensées appeared in 1670, eight years after their author’s death. The sentence is used to mock the relativity of laws and opinions from one country to the next.
The source
Pensées, 1670
Original text checked word for word in the work; the translation is by quotesay.
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Author
Blaise Pascal
A precocious mathematician and physicist who built one of the first calculating machines, Blaise Pascal later turned to religious and moral reflection. His Pensées, published after his death in 1670, are the fragments of an unfinished defence of Christianity.
Quotes by Blaise Pascal