It is a good thing to proceed in order and to establish propositions. This is the way to gain ground and to progress with certainty.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZThe knowledge which we have acquired ought not to resemble a great shop without order, and without an inventory; we ought to know what we possess, and be able to make it serve us in need.
More Gottfried Leibniz Quotes
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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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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.
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The present is great with the future.
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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.
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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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Nothing is necessitated whose opposite is possible.
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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.
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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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In symbols one observes an advantage in discovery which is greatest when they express the exact nature of a thing briefly and, as it were, picture it; then indeed the labor of thought is wonderfully diminished.
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The pleasure we obtain from music comes from counting, but counting unconsciously. Music is nothing but unconscious arithmetic.
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For things remain possible, even if God does not choose them. Indeed, even if God does not will something to exist, it is possible for it to exist, since, by its nature, it could exist if God were to will it to exist.
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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.
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To love is to find pleasure in the happiness of others.
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But in simple substances the influence of one monad over another is ideal only.
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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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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.
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The knowledge which we have acquired ought not to resemble a great shop without order, and without an inventory; we ought to know what we possess, and be able to make it serve us in need.
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Virtue is the habit of acting according to wisdom.
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Take what you need, do what you should, you will get what you want.
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There is a certain destiny of everything, regulated by the foreknowledge and providence of God in His works.
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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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Taking mathematics from the beginning of the world to the time when Newton lived, what he had done was much the better half.
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It is worth noting that the notation facilitates discovery. This, in a most wonderful way, reduces the mind’s labour.
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All things in God are spontaneous.
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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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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.
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