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Who really said it

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction

Pascal — but the word 'religious' is the translator's Blaise Pascal 1623–1662 · French mathematician, physicist and religious philosopher
Attributed Free to reuse

The thought is genuinely Pascal’s and the fragment is catalogued: Lafuma 813, Sellier 658, printed in the Pensées and numbered 895 in the Brunschvicg edition everyone quotes from. But the famous English has been sharpened twice. Pascal’s own manuscript reads ‘par conscience’. His Port-Royal editors printed ‘par un faux principe de conscience’. And W. F. Trotter’s 1910 translation rendered that as ‘religious conviction’ — a word that appears in neither French version.

Last verified 21 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Unconfirmed quote & credit

“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction” Blaise Pascal, Pensées, fragment 895, trans. W. F. Trotter (1910). Pascal's own French: "Jamais on ne fait le mal si pleinement et si gaiement que quand on le fait par conscience."

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In context

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Provenance

The source

Work
Pensées, Blaise Pascal
Fragment
Lafuma 813 · Sellier 658 · Brunschvicg 895
First printed
Port-Royal edition, January 1670 (reprinted 1671)
Popular English
W. F. Trotter, 1910 — public domain
Language of source
French

Jamais on ne fait le mal si pleinement et si gaiement que quand on le fait par conscience. Pascal's manuscript — Lafuma 813 / Sellier 658

Pascal’s own French, before any editor touched it. Nine words in, the crucial phrase is simply par conscience. The Port-Royal printing expands it to par un faux principe de conscience, and Trotter’s English replaces the lot with religious conviction — a term with no counterpart in either French line.

The fragment with its manuscript and Port-Royal variants

How we traced it

  • Start with Pascal’s own paper. The manuscript fragment — Lafuma 813, Sellier 658 — reads simply par conscience: from conscience. That is the sentence Pascal actually wrote, and it indicts everyone who acts on inner certainty, believers and unbelievers alike the fragment, with variants ↗.
  • Now the first sharpening. The editors who assembled the Pensées for publication after his death printed it as par un faux principe de conscience — ‘from a false principle of conscience.’ Those three added words quietly change the claim: Pascal blamed conscience itself, his editors blamed only mistaken conscience. This is the text that carries Brunschvicg’s number 895.
  • Then the second sharpening, in English. W. F. Trotter, whose 1910 Everyman translation is the one reprinted everywhere and quoted online, turned ‘a false principle of conscience’ into ‘religious conviction’. The modern translations do not: Krailsheimer (1966) has ‘out of conscience’, Ariew (2004) the same. Trotter is the reason the sentence reads as an attack on religion Trotter’s wording ↗.
Public domain

The wording you are most likely to quote is free to reuse. Pascal died in 1662 and the French is long out of copyright; W. F. Trotter’s English was published in 1910 and is public domain in the United States and in life-plus-seventy countries alike. The catch is that the faithful translations are the ones you cannot freely reuse: A. J. Krailsheimer’s Penguin version (1966) and Roger Ariew’s (2004) are both in copyright, and both say ‘conscience’ rather than ‘religious conviction’. Reproducing a modern editor’s notes or fragment ordering is a separate question again. This is not legal advice.

This reflects the original work, which is public domain. If your exact English wording comes from a specific modern translation, that translation may itself still be under copyright — check the edition you quote.

Fact-check

What actually changed

Nobody stole this quote from Pascal. It was altered in plain sight, twice, by people who put their names to the work — which makes it a much more interesting case than an ordinary fake.

Genuinely Blaise Pascal verified fragment

The fragment is catalogued in every standard edition — Lafuma 813, Sellier 658, Brunschvicg 895 — and printed from Pascal’s surviving papers. There is no doubt about authorship at all.

Port-Royal, 1670 'un faux principe de'

Pascal wrote par conscience. The Port-Royal edition prints par un faux principe de conscience. The insertion narrows the charge from conscience as such to conscience gone wrong — softer, safer, and not what he wrote the variants ↗.

W. F. Trotter, 1910 'religious conviction'

Neither French version contains a word meaning religious. Trotter supplied it, and because his is the public-domain English that fills the internet, his choice became the quotation. Krailsheimer and Ariew both translate the same fragment with ‘conscience’ and neither produces the famous sentence compare the translations ↗.

A devout Catholic apologist context, not contradiction

The line is usually deployed as an anti-religious epigram, which is odd given Pascal spent his last years writing a defence of Christianity. He is not attacking faith here; he is attacking the certainty that makes cruelty feel righteous — a warning aimed at least as much at believers as at anyone else.

'conviction' or 'convictions' minor variant

Both singular and plural circulate, and some versions drop ‘so’ or swap ‘Men’ for ‘We’. Trotter’s text is the anchor if you need one form.

Genuinely Pascal — Pensées, Lafuma 813 / Sellier 658 — but he wrote ‘from conscience’. His editors added ‘a false principle of’, and Trotter’s 1910 English supplied ‘religious’ the variants ↗.

Context

Why it resonates

Because it names something everyone has seen and few can explain: the cheerfulness. Ordinary wrongdoing is furtive and comes with a flinch. Wrongdoing performed as a duty is done thoroughly, in daylight, in a good mood — and Pascal puts his finger on the mechanism, which is a clear conscience.

Trotter’s word choice narrowed a universal observation into a charge against religion, and that is the version the world adopted. Pascal’s own sentence is broader and, if anything, more uncomfortable: it is not about believers, it is about anyone who is sure they are right.

Pascal wrote 'from conscience'. 'Religious' was added in English, 248 years later.

The same fragment, three ways

Pascal’s manuscript — ‘…quand on le fait par conscience.’ From conscience, full stop.

Port-Royal, 1670 — ‘…par un faux principe de conscience.’ From a false principle of conscience.

Trotter, 1910 — ‘…when they do it from religious conviction.’ The version you know.

Krailsheimer, 1966 — ‘We never do evil so fully and cheerfully as when we do it out of conscience.’ Faithful, and in copyright.

The distance between line one and line three is the whole reason this page exists: a public-domain translation is free, which is not the same as accurate.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Truth Doubt

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Pensées — the fragment with manuscript and Port-Royal variantspenseesdepascal.fr

The scholarly apparatus: Pascal’s own wording beside what his editors printed, with Lafuma, Sellier and Brunschvicg numbers.
Pensées #895, translated by W. F. Trotter (1910)wist.info

The English that went viral, with the competing modern renderings set beside it.
Pensées, Trotter translation — full textgutenberg.org

The public-domain Trotter Pensées in full, if you want to read the fragment in its printed company.

The true author

Who was Blaise Pascal?

Blaise Pascal

1623–1662 · French mathematician, physicist and religious philosopher

Blaise Pascal invented a mechanical calculator at nineteen, co-founded probability theory with Fermat, and then, after a night of religious experience in 1654, turned to defending Christian faith. He died at thirty-nine with that defence unfinished — thousands of loose paper fragments that other people had to arrange and publish. That is the fact behind this page: the Pensées is not a book Pascal wrote but a book assembled from his notes, and every edition since has renumbered and, occasionally, rephrased him. He is one of the few great authors whose most famous sentences you should always check against the manuscript.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

Pascal, Blaise. Pensées, fragment Lafuma 813 / Sellier 658; Brunschvicg 895. First printed Port-Royal edition, 1670. English: trans. W. F. Trotter, 1910.

MLA (9th ed.)

Pascal, Blaise. Pensées. 1670. Fragment 895. Translated by W. F. Trotter, 1910.

APA (7th ed.)

Pascal, B. (1670). Pensées (fragment 895; W. F. Trotter, Trans., 1910).

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Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully’?” Last verified 21 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/men-never-do-evil-so-completely-and-cheerfully

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