Pascal on the Paradox of Humanity

What sort of freak then is man! How novel, how monstrous, how chaotic, how paradoxical, how prodigious! Judge of all things, feeble earthworm, repository of truth, sink of doubt and error, the glory and refuse of the universe!

Blaise Pascal, Pensées. Trans. A. J. Krailsheimer. New York: Penguin, 1995, 34