“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.”

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.

Everything that is possible demands to exist.

Why is there anything at all rather than nothing whatsoever?

It is worth noting that the notation facilitates discovery. This, in a most wonderful way, reduces the mind’s labour.

Thus God alone is the primary Unity, or original simple substance, from which all monads, created and derived, are produced.

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.

Virtue is the habit of acting according to wisdom.

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.

To love is to find pleasure in the happiness of others.

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.

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.

The world is not a machine. Everything in it is force, life, thought.

To love is to take delight in happiness of another, or, what amounts to the same thing, it is to account another’s happiness as one’s own.

Make me the the master of education, and I will undertake to change the world.

It’s easier to be original and foolish than original and wise.

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.

I am capable of holding the quote-unquote ‘title’ of leading man. Leading man just means people want to see you and assume that you can hold a film, carry a movie.

I want to be respected as a guy who knows what he’s talking about. And that, to me, holds more weight than anything else.

Hold everybody accountable? Ridiculous!

You can blame the other guy for saying it, or you can look at yourself and say, ‘I must have contributed to this.’

The questions are diamonds you hold in the light.

Nature holds the key to our aesthetic, intellectual, cognitive and even spiritual satisfaction.

When we hold something, anything, in our thought, then somehow coincidence leads us in the direction that we’ve been wishing to lead ourselves.

There are a good many points about which I may be diffident, but when it comes to questions of Truth and intellectual independence, there is no holding me – I can envisage no finer end than to sacrifice oneself for a conviction.