Gottfried Leibniz Quotes

Take what you need, do what you should, you will get what you want.

Everything that is possible demands to exist.

Every present state of a simple substance is the natural consequence of its preceding state, in such a way that its present is big with its future.

Every mind has a horizon in respect to its present intellectual capacity but not in respect to its future intellectual capacity.

To love is to be delighted by the happiness of someone, or to experience pleasure upon the happiness of another. I define this as true love.

The greatness of a life can only be estimated by the multitude of its actions. We should not count the years, it is our actions which constitute our life.

There are also two kinds of truths, those of reasoning and those of fact. Truths of reasoning are necessary and their opposite is impossible, and those of fact are contingent and their opposite is possible. When a truth is necessary its reason can be found by analysis, resolving it into more simple ideas and truths until we reach those which are primitive.

Music is a hidden arithmetic exercise of the soul, which does not know that it is counting.

Music is the pleasure the human mind experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting.

If we were magically shrunk and put into someone's brain while she was thinking, we would see all the pumps, pistons, gears and levers working away and we would be able to describe the workings completely, in mechanical terms, thereby completely describing the thought processes of the brain. But that description would not contain any mention of thought! It would contain nothing but descriptions of pumps, pistons, levers!

God, possessing supreme and infinite wisdom, acts in the most perfect manner, not only metaphysically, but also morally speaking, and ... with respect to ourselves, we can say that the more enlightened and informed we are about God's works, the more we will be disposed to find them excellent and in complete conformity with what we might have desired.

We may say, that not only the soul (the mirror of an indestructible universe) is indestructible, but also the animal itself is, although its mechanism is frequently destroyed in parts.

Imaginary numbers are a fine and wonderful refuge of the divine spirit almost an amphibian between being and non-being.

The present is saturated with the past and pregnant with the future.

There are two famous labyrinths where our reason very often goes astray. One concerns the great question of the free and the necessary, above all in the production and the origin of Evil. The other consists in the discussion of continuity, and of the indivisibles which appear to be the elements thereof, and where the consideration of the infinite must enter in.

The words 'Here you can find perfect peace' can be written only over the gates of a cemetery.

There is a certain destiny of everything, regulated by the foreknowledge and providence of God in His works.

The world is not a machine. Everything in it is force, life, thought.

All the different classes of beings which taken together make up the universe are, in the ideas of God who knows distinctly their essential gradations, only so many ordinates of a single curve so closely united that it would be impossible to place others between any two of them, since that would imply disorder and imperfection. Thus men are linked with the animals, these with the plants and these with the fossils which in turn merge with those bodies which our senses and our imagination represent to us as absolutely inanimate.

The present is big with the future, the future might be read in the past, the distant is expressed in the near.

Reality cannot be found except in One single source, because of the interconnection of all things with one another. I maintain also that substances, whether material or immaterial, cannot be conceived in their bare essence without any activity, activity being of the essence of substance in general.

Now, as there is an infinity of possible universes in the Ideas of God, and as only one of them can exist, there must be a sufficient reason for God's choice, which determines him toward one rather than another. And this reason can be found only in the fitness, or the degrees of perfection, that these worlds contain, since each possible thing has the right to claim existence in proportion to the perfection it involves.

Why is there anything at all rather than nothing whatsoever?

I do not conceive of any reality at all as without genuine unity.

There are also two kinds of truths: truth of reasoning and truths of fact.

But it is the knowledge of necessary and eternal truths which distinguishes us from mere animals, and gives us reason and the sciences, raising us to knowledge of ourselves and God. It is this in us which we call the rational soul or mind.

To love is to find pleasure in the happiness of others.

Philosophy consists mostly of kicking up a lot of dust and then complaining that you can't see anything.

Reality cannot be found except in One single source, because of the interconnection of all things with one another.

I am so in favor of the actual infinite that instead of admitting that Nature abhors it, as is commonly said, I hold that Nature makes frequent use of it everywhere, in order to show more effectively the perfections of its Author.

Nihil est sine ratione. There is nothing without a reason.

[Alternate translation:] The Divine Spirit found a sublime outlet in that wonder of analysis, that portent of the ideal world, that amphibian between being and not-being, which we call the imaginary root of negative unity.

It is God who is the ultimate reason things, and the Knowledge of God is no less the beginning of science than his essence and will are the beginning of things.

We live in the best of all possible worlds

Thus God alone is the primary Unity, or original simple substance, from which all monads, created and derived, are produced.

Taking mathematics from the beginning of the world to the time when Newton lived, what he had done was much the better half.

The art of discovering the causes of phenomena, or true hypotheses, is like the art of deciphering, in which an ingenious conjecture often greatly shortens the road.

The pleasure we obtain from music comes from counting, but counting unconsciously. Music is nothing but unconscious arithmetic.

I agree with you that it is important to examine our presuppositions, throughly and once for all, in order to establish something solid. For I hold that it is only when we can prove all that we bring forward that we perfectly understand the thing under consideration. I know that the common herd takes little pleasure in these researches, but I know also that the common herd take little pains thoroughly to understand things.

The most perfect society is that whose purpose is the universal and supreme happiness.

I have said more than once, that I hold space to be something purely relative, as time; an order of coexistences, as time is an order of successions.

Every substance is as a world apart, independent of everything else except God.

All things in God are spontaneous.

I hold that it is only when we can prove everything we assert that we understand perfectly the thing under consideration.

In my judgment an organic machine new to nature never arises, since it always contains an infinity of organs so that it can express, in its own way, the whole universe; indeed, it always contains all past and present times.

For, above all, I hold a notion of possibility and necessity according to which there are some things that are possible, but yet not necessary, and which do not really exist. From this it follows that a reason that always forces a free mind to choose one thing over another (whether that reason derives from the perfection of a thing, as it does in God, or from our imperfection) does not eliminate our freedom.

God makes nothing without order, and everything that forms itself develops imperceptibly out of small parts.

He who hasn't tasted bitter things hasn't earned sweet things.

It's easier to be original and foolish than original and wise.

Make me the the master of education, and I will undertake to change the world.