Why is there anything at all rather than nothing whatsoever?
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZThe present is saturated with the past and pregnant with the future.
More Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Quotes
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A distinction must be made between true and false ideas, and that too much rein must not be given to a man’s imagination under pretext of its being a clear and distinct intellection.
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There is nothing without reason.
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There is no way in which a simple substance could begin in the course of nature, since it cannot be formed by means of compounding.
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I also readily admit that there are animals, taken in the ordinary sense, that are incomparably larger than those we know of, and I have sometimes said in jest that there might be a system like ours which is the pocketwatch of some enormous giant.
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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.
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The words ‘Here you can find perfect peace’ can be written only over the gates of a cemetery.
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To love is to place happiness in the heart of another.
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Imaginary numbers are a fine and wonderful refuge of the divine spirit almost an amphibian between being and non-being.
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Thus God alone is the primary Unity, or original simple substance, from which all monads, created and derived, are produced.
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One cannot explain words without making incursions into the sciences themselves, as is evident from dictionaries; and, conversely, one cannot present a science without at the same time defining its terms.
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We never have a full demonstration, although there is always an underlying reason for the truth, even if it is only perfectly understood by God, who alone penetrated the infinite series in one stroke of the mind.
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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.
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Music is a secret and unconscious mathematical problem of the soul.
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Music is the pleasure the human mind experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting.
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Nature does not make leaps.
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It’s easier to be original and foolish than original and wise.
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The present is saturated with the past and pregnant with the future.
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Our reasonings are grounded upon two great principles, that of contradiction, in virtue of which we judge false that which involves a contradiction, and true that which is opposed or contradictory to the false.
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Although the whole of this life were said to be nothing but a dream and the physical world nothing but a phantasm, I should call this dream or phantasm real enough, if, using reason well, we were never deceived by it.
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All things in God are spontaneous.
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God’s relation to spirits is not like that of a craftsman to his work, but also like that of a prince to his subjects.
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He who hasn’t tasted bitter things hasn’t earned sweet things.
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There never is absolute birth nor complete death, in the strict sense, consisting in the separation of the soul from the body. What we call births are developments and growths, while what we call deaths are envelopments and diminutions.
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I hold that it is only when we can prove everything we assert that we understand perfectly the thing under consideration.
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Take what you need, do what you should, you will get what you want.
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If you have a clear idea of a soul, you will have a clear idea of a form; for it is of the same genus, though a different species.
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ