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.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZIf 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.
More Gottfried Leibniz Quotes
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There is nothing waste, nothing sterile, nothing dead in the universe; no chaos, no confusions, save in appearance.
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All things in God are spontaneous.
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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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Every substance is as a world apart, independent of everything else except God.
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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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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.
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Philosophy consists mostly of kicking up a lot of dust and then complaining that you can’t see anything.
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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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And there must be simple substances, because there are compounds; for the compound is nothing but a collection or aggregatum of simples.
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It is necessary to believe that the mixture of evil has produced the greatest possible good: otherwise the evil would not have been permitted.
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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.
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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 past is pregnant with the present.
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Either there are no corporeal substances, and bodies are merely phenomena which are true or consistent with each other, such as a rainbow or a perfectly coherent dream, or there is in all corporeal substances something analogous to the soul.
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When God works miracles, he does not do it in order to supply the wants of nature, but those of grace. Whoever thinks otherwise, must needs have a very mean notion of the wisdom and power of God.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ