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 LEIBNIZNow this connection or adaption of all created things with each, and of each with all the rest, means that each simple substance has relations which express all the others, and that consequently it is a perpetual living mirror of the universe.
More Gottfried Leibniz Quotes
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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.
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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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Indeed in general I hold that there is nothing truer than happiness, and nothing happier and sweeter than truth.
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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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He who hasn’t tasted bitter things hasn’t earned sweet things.
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The present is saturated with the past and pregnant with the future.
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It is God who is the ultimate reason things, and the Knowledge of God is no less the beginning of science than his essence and will are the beginning of things.
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It has long seemed ridiculous to me to suppose that the nature of things has been so poor and stingy that it provided souls only to such a trifling mass of bodies on our globe, like human bodies, when it could have given them to all, without interfering with its other ends.
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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.
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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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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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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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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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Music is the pleasure the human mind experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting.
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The most perfect society is that whose purpose is the universal and supreme happiness.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ