Every present state of a simple substance is the natural consequence of its preceding state, in such a way that its present is big with its future.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZThere 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.
More Gottfried Leibniz Quotes
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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.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ -
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 LEIBNIZ -
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.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ -
The greatness of a life can only be estimated by the multitude of its actions. We should not count the years, it is our actions which constitute our life.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ -
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.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ -
Music is nothing but unconscious arithmetic.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ -
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 -
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 -
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.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ -
Imaginary numbers are a fine and wonderful refuge of the divine spirit almost an amphibian between being and non-being.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ -
We should like Nature to go no further; we should like it to be finite, like our mind; but this is to ignore the greatness and majesty of the Author of things.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ -
The larger the mass of collected things, the less will be their usefulness. Therefore, one should not only strive to assemble new goods from everywhere, but one must endeavor to put in the right order those that one already possesses.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ -
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 -
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.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ -
There is nothing without reason.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ