“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.”

A great doctor kills more people than a great general.

The past is pregnant with the present.

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.

What is what must be.

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.

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.

Nature does not make leaps.

It is unworthy of excellent men to lose hours like slaves in the labor of calculation which could be relegated to anyone else if machines were used.

I am so in favor of the actual infinite that instead of admitting that Nature abhors it, as is commonly said, I hold that Nature makes frequent use of it everywhere, in order to show more effectively the perfections of its Author.

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.

Men act like brutes in so far as the sequences of their perceptions arise through the principle of memory only, like those empirical physicians who have mere practice without theory.

There is nothing waste, nothing sterile, nothing dead in the universe; no chaos, no confusions, save in appearance.

Imaginary numbers are a fine and wonderful refuge of the divine spirit almost an amphibian between being and non-being.

All things in God are spontaneous.

And there must be simple substances, because there are compounds; for the compound is nothing but a collection or aggregatum of simples.

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.

One other thing, if it’s possible, as songwriters, you should also develop yourself as record producers.

Capitalism is a development by refinement from feudalism, just as feudalism is development by refinement from slavery .

I want to challenge those who aim to block change, stop development and restrict success. I want to challenge the caution that strangles risk-takers and go-getters.

Providing all Latin-American children with the education and early childhood development that they need is in the best interest of all, so it has to be a priority for all of us, not only the government and civil society, but also the business sector.

Without books, the development of civilization would have been impossible.

Seen that way, the wholesale transformation of production technologies that is mandated by pollution prevention creates a new surge of economic development.

If a project has not achieved a system architecture, including its rationale, the project should not proceed to full-scale system development. Specifying the architecture as a deliverable enables its use throughout the development and maintenance process.

As we age we have not only to readdress earlier developmental crises but also somehow to find the way to three affirmations that may seem to conflict. … We have to affirm our own life. We have to affirm our own death. And we have to affirm love, both given and received.