"The parts of the universe ... all..." - Quote by Blaise Pascal

“Who confers reputation? who gives respect and veneration to persons, to books, to great men? Who but Opinion? How utterly insufficient are all the riches of the world without her approbation!”

“If we do not know ourselves to be full of pride, ambition, lust, weakness, misery, and injustice, we are indeed blind. And if, knowing this, we do not desire deliverance, what can we say of a man...?”

“Force and not opinion is the queen of the world; but it is opinion that uses the force.[Fr., La force est la reine du monde, et non pas l'opinion; mais l'opinion est celle qui use de la force.]”

“Either all things proceed from one intelligent source and come together as in one body, and the part ought not to find fault with what is done for the benefit of the whole; or there are only atoms, and nothing else than a mixture and dispersion. Why, then, art thou disturbed? Say to this ruling faculty, Art thou dead, art thou corrupted, art thou playing the hypocrite, art thou become a beast, dost thou herd and feed with the rest?”

“If the universe is everything, and scientists say that the universe is expanding, what is it expanding into?”

“Every individual strives to grow and exclude, to the extremities of the universe, and to impose the law of its being on every other creature.”

“Anything we destroy in ourselves we destroy in others. Our falls lower others and throw them down; we owe it to our fellows to keep upright, in order that they too may keep their feet.”

“[T]he small is great, the great is small; all is in equilibrium in necessity.”

“Who then understands the reciprocal flux and reflux of the infinitely great and the infinitely small, the echoing of causes in the abysses of being, and the avalanches of creation?”