Top 127 Quotes & Sayings by Gottfried Leibniz
Explore popular quotes and sayings by a German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz.
Last updated on September 17, 2024.
For since it is impossible for a created monad to have a physical influence on the inner nature of another, this is the only way in which one can be dependent on another.
It can have its effect only through the intervention of God, inasmuch as in the ideas of God a monad rightly demands that God, in regulating the rest from the beginning of things, should have regard to itself.
I do not conceive of any reality at all as without genuine unity.
Indeed every monad must be different from every other. For there are never in nature two beings, which are precisely alike, and in which it is not possible to find some difference which is internal, or based on some intrinsic quality.
This is why the ultimate reason of things must lie in a necessary substance, in which the differentiation of the changes only exists eminently as in their source; and this is what we call God.
When a truth is necessary, the reason for it can be found by analysis, that is, by resolving it into simpler ideas and truths until the primary ones are reached.
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.
Finally there are simple ideas of which no definition can be given; there are also axioms or postulates, or in a word primary principles, which cannot be proved and have no need of proof.
Men act like brutes in so far as the sequences of their perceptions arise through the principle of memory only, like those empirical physicians who have mere practice without theory.
Music is the pleasure the human mind experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting.
Whence it follows that God is absolutely perfect, since perfection is nothing but magnitude of positive reality, in the strict sense, setting aside the limits or bounds in things which are limited.
I hold that the mark of a genuine idea is that its possibility can be proved, either a priori by conceiving its cause or reason, or a posteriori when experience teaches us that it is in fact in nature.
But in simple substances the influence of one monad over another is ideal only.
There are also two kinds of truths: truth of reasoning and truths of fact. Truths of reasoning are necessary and their opposite is impossible; those of fact are contingent and their opposite is possible.
I also take it as granted that every created thing, and consequently the created monad also, is subject to change, and indeed that this change is continual in each one.
It follows from what we have just said, that the natural changes of monads come from an internal principle, since an external cause would be unable to influence their inner being.
The ultimate reason of things must lie in a necessary substance, in which the differentiation of the changes only exists eminently as in their source; and this is what we call God.
Now where there are no parts, there neither extension, nor shape, nor divisibility is possible. And these monads are the true atoms of nature and, in a word, the elements of things.
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!
The pleasure we obtain from music comes from counting, but counting unconsciously. Music is nothing but unconscious arithmetic.
Music is a secret and unconscious mathematical problem of the soul.
It is necessary to believe that the mixture of evil has produced the greatest possible good: otherwise the evil would not have been permitted.
What is is what must be.
Take what you need, do what you should, you will get what you want.
Nothing is more important than to see the sources of invention which are, in my opinion more interesting than the inventions themselves.
Music is a hidden arithmetic exercise of the soul, which does not know that it is counting.
To love is to take delight in happiness of another, or, what amounts to the same thing, it is to account another's happiness as one's own.
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.
Imaginary numbers are a fine and wonderful refuge of the divine spirit almost an amphibian between being and non-being.
The most perfect society is that whose purpose
is the universal and supreme happiness.
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.
Make me the the master of education, and I will undertake to change the world.
Indeed in general I hold that there is nothing truer than happiness, and nothing happier and sweeter than truth.
He who hasn't tasted bitter things hasn't earned sweet things.
The present is saturated with the past and pregnant with the future.
I do not believe that a world without evil, preferable in order to ours, is possible; otherwise it would have been preferred. It is necessary to believe that the mixture of evil has produced the greatest possible good: otherwise the evil would not have been permitted. The combination of all the tendencies to the good has produced the best; but as there are goods that are incompatible together, this combination and this result can introduce the destruction of some good, and as a result some evil.
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.
To love is to place happiness in the heart of another.
Why is there anything at all rather than nothing whatsoever?
Nihil est sine ratione. There is nothing without a reason.
Nothing is accomplished all at once, and it is one of my great maxims, and one of the most completely verified, that Nature makes no leaps: a maxim which I have called the law of continuity.
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.
I am convinced that the unwritten knowledge scattered among men of different callings surpasses in quantity and in importance anything we find in books, and that the greater part of our wealth has yet to be recorded.
It is unworthy of excellent men to lose hours like slaves in the labor of calculation which could be relegated to anyone else if machines were used.
He who understands Archimedes and Apollonius will admire less the achievements of the foremost men of later times.
Thus God alone is the primary Unity, or original simple substance, from which all monads, created and derived, are produced.
We live in the best of all possible worlds
Nothing is necessitated whose opposite is possible.
Philosophy consists mostly of kicking up a lot of dust and then complaining that you can't see anything.
Everything that is possible demands to exist.
Virtue is the habit of acting according to wisdom.
To love is to find pleasure in the happiness of others.
There is nothing waste, nothing sterile, nothing dead in the universe; no chaos, no confusions, save in appearance.
Every mind has a horizon in respect to its present intellectual capacity but not in respect to its future intellectual capacity.
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.
A great doctor kills more people than a great general.
The words 'Here you can find perfect peace' can be written only over the gates of a cemetery.
It's easier to be original and foolish than original and wise.
The world is not a machine. Everything in it is force, life, thought.
Reality cannot be found except in One single source, because of the interconnection of all things with one another.
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