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I don’t say that bodies like flint, which are commonly called inanimate, have perceptions and appetition; rather they have something of that sort in them, as worms are in cheese.

Gottfried Leibniz

In whatever manner God created the world, it would always have been regular and in a certain general order. God, however, has chosen the most perfect, that is to say, the one which is at the same time the simplest in hypothesis and the richest in phenomena.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Choice Creation God Perfection Phenomena Regular World
There are also two kinds of truths: truth of reasoning and truths of fact.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Fact Kind Reason Truth
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.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Infinity Judgment Machine Past Present Time
God makes nothing without order, and everything that forms itself develops imperceptibly out of small parts.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Development Form God Order Small
Why is there anything at all rather than nothing whatsoever?
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Existence Philosophy
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.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Existence Hold Order Space Success Time
And there must be simple substances, because there are compounds; for the compound is nothing but a collection or aggregatum of simples.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Collection Compound Simplicity Substance
Natural religion itself, seems to decay very much. Many will have human souls to be material: others make God himself a corporeal being.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

God Human Natural Religion Soul
Each portion of matter may be conceived of as a garden full of plants, and as a pond full of fishes. But each branch of the plant, each member of the animal, each drop of its humors, is also such a garden or such a pond.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Animal Garden Humor Plants Portion
Imaginary numbers are a fine and wonderful refuge of the divine spirit almost an amphibian between being and non-being.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Divine Fine Imagination Spirit Wonderful
We live in the best of all possible worlds.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Best Live Possible World
Every mind has a horizon in respect to its present intellectual capacity but not in respect to its future intellectual capacity.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Capacity Horizon Intellectual Mindset Present Respect
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.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Choice Existence God Possible Willing
There is nothing waste, nothing sterile, nothing dead in the universe; no chaos, no confusions, save in appearance.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Appearance Chaos Confusion Death Save Universe Wasted
The present is saturated with the past and pregnant with the future.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Future Past Pregnant Present
Philosophy consists mostly of kicking up a lot of dust and then complaining that you can’t see anything.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Complaint Philosophy Yourself

I don’t say that bodies like flint, which are commonly called inanimate, have perceptions and appetition; rather they have something of that sort in them, as worms are in cheese.

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I don’t say that bodies like flint, which are commonly called inanimate, have perceptions and appetition; rather they have something of that sort in them, as worms are in cheese.

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Popular Authors

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