# Quote — Blaise Pascal, Pensees

> Since everything then is cause and effect, dependent and supporting, mediate and immediate, and all is held together by a natural though imperceptible chain, which binds together things most distant and most different, I hold it equally impossible to know the parts without knowing the whole, and to know the whole without knowing the parts in detail. The eternity of things in itself or in God must also astonish our brief duration. The fixed and constant immobility of nature, in comparison with the continual change which goes on within us, must have the same effect.

- Author: [Blaise Pascal](https://www.leafyquotes.com/blaise-pascal.md)
- Book: [Pensees](https://www.leafyquotes.com/blaise-pascal/pensees.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Pens%C3%A9es#Section_II:_The_Misery_of_Man_without_God_(60-183)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/blaise-pascal/pensees/since-everything-then

## More from this book

> Man is only a subject full of error, natural and ineffaceable, without grace. Nothing shows him the truth. Everything deceives him. These two sources of truth, reason and the senses, besides being both wanting in sincerity, deceive each other in turn. The senses mislead the reason with false appearances, and receive from reason in their turn the same trickery which they apply to her; reason has her revenge. The passions of the soul trouble the senses, and make false impressions upon them. They rival each other in falsehood and deception.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/blaise-pascal/pensees/man-is-only.md)

> The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/blaise-pascal/pensees/the-eternal-silence.md)

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

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/blaise-pascal/pensees/men-never-do-evil.md)