Who really said it

We are generally the better persuaded by the reasons we discover ourselves than by those given to us by others

Q: Did Blaise Pascal say "We are generally the better persuaded by the reasons we discover ourselves than by those given to us by others"?

Not confirmed. The thought is genuinely Pascal's: the French sits in the Pensées as Section I, fragment 10, and is easy to confirm. But this particular English wording is not the standard translation and matches no published edition we could source — it is an uncredited rendering that circulates through quotation aggregators. W. F. Trotter's public-domain English reads "People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others."

Attributed to Blaise Pascal 1623–1662 · French mathematician, physicist and religious philosopher

Attributed Rights unconfirmed

The thought is genuinely Pascal’s: the French sits in the Pensées as Section I, fragment 10, and is easy to confirm. But this particular English wording is not the standard translation and matches no published edition we could source — it is an uncredited rendering that circulates through quotation aggregators. W. F. Trotter’s public-domain English reads “People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others.”

Last verified 15 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Unconfirmed quote & credit

“We are generally the better persuaded by the reasons we discover ourselves than by those given to us by others” — Blaise Pascal, Pensées, Section I, fragment 10. Pascal wrote the thought, in French, but this English wording is an uncredited rendering: no translator or edition can be traced to it, and it is not W. F. Trotter's. For a citable English, use Trotter's public-domain translation: "People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others." (trans. W. F. Trotter, 1910).

Can you use it?

We couldn’t verify where this wording comes from, so there’s no rights status to give. Safe to present as an unverified or anonymous line — just don’t assert a specific author or source.

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In context

Evoking the world of Blaise Pascal — French mathematician, physicist and religious philosopher. Theme: "We are generally the better persuaded by the reasons we discover ourselves than by those given to us by others". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

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Provenance

The source: Pensées, Section I, fragment 10

Work: Pensées
Location: Section I, “Thoughts on Mind and on Style” — fragment 10 in the Brunschvicg numbering
First published: 1670, posthumously — Pascal died in 1662 leaving the work unfinished
Translation: Popular wording: no identifiable translator or edition. Standard public-domain English: W. F. Trotter, in print by 1910.

On se persuade mieux, pour l’ordinaire, par les raisons qu’on a soi-même trouvées, que par celles qui sont venues dans l’esprit des autres.

“People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others.” — trans. W. F. Trotter Fragment 10 · Section I

Fragment 10 is a single free-standing sentence; there is no surrounding paragraph to quote, so this is the whole of it. The English given here is Trotter’s, the standard public-domain translation — not the smoother wording this page asks about, which matches no edition we could locate.

Pensées, éd. Brunschvicg, Section I, fragment 10 (French Wikisource)

How we verified this

The French is real and easy to check. Section I of the Brunschvicg edition ↗ carries it as fragment 10: “On se persuade mieux, pour l’ordinaire, par les raisons qu’on a soi-même trouvées, que par celles qui sont venues dans l’esprit des autres.”
The standard English reads differently. Project Gutenberg’s Trotter text ↗ gives fragment 10 as “People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others” — the same wording Wikiquote lists in its sourced Section I ↗.
Trotter’s rendering was in print well before 1931: the Internet Archive’s scan of the Harvard Classics volume ↗ (P. F. Collier & Son, 1910) prints fragment 10 in exactly that form.
The popular wording, by contrast, arrives with no edition at all. The Quotations Page ↗ credits it to “Michael Moncur’s (Cynical) Quotations” — a hobbyist compilation, not a translation — and supplies no translator, year, or page. No edition search turned up a published translation matching it.

Two things here have clear status and one does not. Pascal’s French (Pensées, 1670) is long out of copyright, and W. F. Trotter’s English translation was in print by 1910 ↗, comfortably before the 1931 US threshold, so it too is public domain — which is why Project Gutenberg hosts it ↗. The wording on this page, however, is neither of those: it is an English rendering with no traceable translator or edition, so we make no claim about its status. If you need Pascal’s thought in English you can reproduce freely, quote Trotter’s.

Fact-check

Right author, unsigned translation

This is not a case of a quote being stolen from someone else — Pascal really did write the sentence, in French, and it is easy to find. The problem is narrower and more common than outright fabrication: the English everyone shares is nobody’s in particular.

No identifiable translator unsourced rendering

“We are generally the better persuaded by the reasons we discover ourselves than by those given to us by others” appears across quotation sites with no edition attached. The Quotations Page ↗ prints it crediting only “Michael Moncur’s (Cynical) Quotations” — no translator, no year, no page.

W. F. Trotter the real translation

Trotter’s fragment 10 reads “People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others” — recognisably the same thought, audibly not the same sentence. Confirmed in Project Gutenberg’s text ↗.

Attributed by Today in Science to the H. F. Stewart edition different wording again

“We are generally more effectually persuaded by reasons we have ourselves discovered than by those which have occurred to others” is cited by Today in Science ↗ to H. F. Stewart (ed.), Pascal’s Pensées (1950), p. 11 — a mid-century edition, and a reminder that not every English Pascal is out of copyright.

Pascal wrote it, and you can read it in his own words: “On se persuade mieux, pour l’ordinaire, par les raisons qu’on a soi-même trouvées, que par celles qui sont venues dans l’esprit des autres” ↗. Credit the man — but if you need a citable English, use Trotter’s.

Context

Why the English keeps sliding around

Pascal never published the Pensées. He died in 1662 leaving a mass of notes — some on scraps pinned together with thread — toward a book he never wrote. His family printed a tidied selection in 1670, and every editor since has re-sorted and re-numbered the fragments: Brunschvicg, Lafuma, Sellier, Le Guern each produce a different ordering of the same material. A Pascal citation that says only “Pensées” is therefore nearly uncheckable, which is exactly the gap quotation sites fall into.

The wording problem is separate and simpler. Fragment 10 is one plain French sentence, and plain French sentences invite loose Englishing. Trotter’s 1910 version is faithful but clunky; the version that went viral is smoother, shorter, and better balanced — and nobody signed it. Somewhere between an anthology and a website, someone improved the prose and the improvement stuck.

Pascal wrote the thought. He just never wrote it in these words.

The fragment numbers, decoded

French Wikisource’s Brunschvicg text lists fragment 10 with a string of cross-references to earlier editors — B., 390; C., 357; P. R., XXIX, 26; Bos., I, x, 10; Faug., I, 173; Hav., VII, 10; Mol., II, 143; Mich., 435 — which is a compact illustration of how many times this one sentence has been renumbered.

Trotter translated from Brunschvicg’s arrangement, which is why his fragment 10 and Brunschvicg’s fragment 10 are the same sentence. Editions built on Lafuma or Sellier will number it differently, so “fragment 10” is only meaningful with the editor named alongside it.

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

Wisdom Doubt

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

Pensées, Brunschvicg edition, Section Ifr.wikisource.org

The French primary text. Fragment 10 is the sentence in question, with cross-references to eight earlier editions.

Pascal’s Pensées, trans. W. F. Trottergutenberg.org

The standard public-domain English translation, free and searchable. Fragment 10 sits in Section I, “Thoughts on Mind and on Style.”

Thoughts, trans. Trotter (P. F. Collier & Son, 1910)archive.org

A scanned 1910 printing of Trotter’s translation — the evidence that this English text predates 1931 and is public domain.

Pensées — Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

Lists fragment 10 in its sourced Section I listing, quoting Trotter and linking the Gutenberg text.

Pensées, full textccel.org

A second independent copy of Trotter’s translation, useful for confirming fragment 10’s wording.

“The Fool Tries to Convince Me with His Reasons…”quoteinvestigator.com

A different but neighbouring saying, often pinned on Aristotle. QI finds no evidence for Aristotle and traces it to a 1942 textbook. It does not discuss Pascal — useful for telling the two apart.

The true author

Who was Blaise Pascal?

Blaise Pascal

1623–1662 · French mathematician, physicist and religious philosopher

Blaise Pascal was a child prodigy who built a mechanical calculator at nineteen, proved that vacuums exist before he was twenty-five, and co-founded probability theory with Fermat at thirty-one. After a religious experience later that same year, 1654, he devoted himself to the Jansenist community at Port-Royal and began drafting a defence of Christian faith. He died at thirty-nine with that defence unfinished, leaving thousands of paper scraps that his family assembled and published in 1670 as the Pensées. Because the book is a pile of fragments rather than a finished argument, it has been renumbered by every major editor since — which is precisely why Pascal quotes drift so easily in English.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

Blaise Pascal, Pensées, ed. Léon Brunschvicg, Section I, fragment 10 (Paris: Hachette). English: Blaise Pascal, Thoughts, trans. W. F. Trotter (New York: P. F. Collier & Son, 1910), fragment 10. The wording “We are generally the better persuaded…” corresponds to no translation we could identify.

MLA (9th ed.)

Pascal, Blaise. Pensées. Edited by Léon Brunschvicg, Hachette, 1670.

APA (7th ed.)

Pascal, B. (1670). Pensées (L. Brunschvicg, Ed.). Hachette.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘We are generally the better persuaded by the reasons we discover ourselves than by those given to us by others’?” Last verified 15 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/we-are-generally-the-better-persuaded-by-the-reasons-we