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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.

Gottfried Leibniz

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
Reality cannot be found except in One single source, because of the interconnection of all things with one another.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Exception Finding Oneself Reality
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
The pleasure we obtain from music comes from counting, but counting unconsciously. Music is nothing but unconscious arithmetic.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Arithmetic Count Music Pleasure Unconscious
I hold that it is only when we can prove everything we assert that we understand perfectly the thing under consideration.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Evidence Hold Perfection Understand
Justice is charity in accordance with wisdom.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Charity Justice Wisdom
We live in the best of all possible worlds.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Best Live Possible World
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

Author Ignorance Infinite Mindset Nature Ourselves
When God works miracles, he does not do it in order to supply the wants of nature, but those of grace. Whoever thinks otherwise, must needs have a very mean notion of the wisdom and power of God.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

God Miracle Nature Power Wisdom Work
Now 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.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Adaption Connection Creation Expression Mirror Simplicity Substance Universe
The present is big with the future, the future might be read in the past, the distant is expressed in the near.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Expression Future Near Past Present Reading
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.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Act Man Perception Practice Theory
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.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Experience Fact Genuine Hold Mark Nature Teaching
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

Certain Establishment Goodness Order Progress
Of what use would it be to you, sir, to become King of China on condition that you forgot what you have been? Would it not be the same as if God, at the same time he destroyed you, created a King in China?
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Condition Destroy God Time Yourself
Take what you need, do what you should, you will get what you want.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Inspirational Necessary Need Yourself
Nothing is more important than to see the sources of invention which are, in my opinion more interesting than the inventions themselves.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Important Invention Myself Opinion See Source
Thus God alone is the primary Unity, or original simple substance, from which all monads, created and derived, are produced.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Alone Creation God Primary Production
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
To love is to place happiness in the heart of another.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Happiness Heart Love Place
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

Body Perception Sort Worm
But in simple substances the influence of one monad over another is ideal only.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Ideal Influence Simplicity
Either there are no corporeal substances, and bodies are merely phenomena which are true or consistent with each other, such as a rainbow or a perfectly coherent dream, or there is in all corporeal substances something analogous to the soul.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Body Dreams Each Other Perfection Phenomena Soul Substance
Therefore, I have attacted [the problem of the catenary] which I had hitherto not attempted, and with my key [the differential calculus] happily opened its secret. Acta eruditorum
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Attachment Happiness Open Problem Secret
In symbols one observes an advantage in discovery which is greatest when they express the exact nature of a thing briefly and, as it were, picture it; then indeed the labor of thought is wonderfully diminished.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Advantage Diminish Greatness Observation Wonderful
There is a world of created beings – living things, animals, entelechies, and souls – in the least part of matter…. Thus there is nothing waste, nothing sterile, nothing dead in the universe; no chaos, no confusions, save in appearance.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Animal Appearance Confusion Creation Death Live Save World
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.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Fake Greatness Ground Judgement Principle Reason True

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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