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 LEIBNIZWe live in the best of all possible worlds.
More Gottfried Leibniz Quotes
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The present is great with the future.
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Virtue is the habit of acting according to wisdom.
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The larger the mass of collected things, the less will be their usefulness. Therefore, one should not only strive to assemble new goods from everywhere, but one must endeavor to put in the right order those that one already possesses.
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There is nothing without reason.
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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.
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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.
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The monad, of which we shall speak here, is nothing but a simple substance which enters into compounds; simple, that is to say, without parts.
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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.
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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.
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Philosophy consists mostly of kicking up a lot of dust and then complaining that you can’t see anything.
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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?
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If you have a clear idea of a soul, you will have a clear idea of a form; for it is of the same genus, though a different species.
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The greatness of a life can only be estimated by the multitude of its actions. We should not count the years, it is our actions which constitute our life.
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We never have a full demonstration, although there is always an underlying reason for the truth, even if it is only perfectly understood by God, who alone penetrated the infinite series in one stroke of the mind.
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This 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.
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