Je suis seul contre trente mille? Point. Gardez, vous la cour, vous l’imposture, moi la vérité. C’est toute ma force. Si je la perds, je suis perdu. Je ne manquerai pas d’accusateurs et de punisseurs. Mais j’ai la vérité, et nous verrons qui l’emportera.

From Blaise Pascal’s Pensées, ed. Philippe Sellier, Paris: Pocket, 2003, p. 543.

Addendum (November 24, 2016)

Having come across this quote plucked from Pascal’s Pensées, I chuckle and raise my arms in mock surprise. Alone against thirty-thousand? How about alone against seven-billion? Lucky Pascal, indeed. The Seventeenth Century was but a joke by comparison with the Twentieth. As well as the Twenty-First, I hasten to add. And the nifty figures above are all that is needed by way of proof. Point.