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Why is there anything at all rather than nothing whatsoever?

Gottfried Leibniz

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
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

God Himself Relation Subject Work
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
Virtue is the habit of acting according to wisdom.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

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

Divine Fine Imagination Spirit Wonderful
What is what must be.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

One Liner
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.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Delight Happiness Love Oneself
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
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.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Beginning God Himself Knowledge Reason Science
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
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
Taking mathematics from the beginning of the world to the time when Newton lived, what he had done was much the better half.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Beginning Better Live Mathematics Time World
Music is nothing but unconscious arithmetic.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Arithmetic Music Unconscious
Nothing is necessitated whose opposite is possible.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Necessary Possible
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.
GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

Author Infinite Nature Order Perfection
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

Why is there anything at all rather than nothing whatsoever?

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Why is there anything at all rather than nothing whatsoever?

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