Taking mathematics from the beginning of the world to the time when Newton lived, what he had done was much the better half.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZTaking mathematics from the beginning of the world to the time when Newton lived, what he had done was much the better half.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZTherefore, 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 LEIBNIZThis is why the ultimate reason of things must lie in a necessary substance, in which the differentiation of the changes only exists eminently as in their source; and this is what we call God.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZNothing is accomplished all at once, and it is one of my great maxims, and one of the most completely verified, that Nature makes no leaps: a maxim which I have called the law of continuity.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZAnd there must be simple substances, because there are compounds; for the compound is nothing but a collection or aggregatum of simples.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZTo 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.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZPhilosophy consists mostly of kicking up a lot of dust and then complaining that you can’t see anything.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZThe monad, of which we shall speak here, is nothing but a simple substance which enters into compounds; simple, that is to say, without parts.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZThere is nothing waste, nothing sterile, nothing dead in the universe; no chaos, no confusions, save in appearance.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZWe live in the best of all possible worlds.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZIt 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.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZThere is no way in which a simple substance could begin in the course of nature, since it cannot be formed by means of compounding.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZThe past is pregnant with the present.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZEvery 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 LEIBNIZImaginary numbers are a fine and wonderful refuge of the divine spirit almost an amphibian between being and non-being.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZEverything that is possible demands to exist.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ