There 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 WILHELM LEIBNIZIn 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.
More Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Quotes
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Natural religion itself, seems to decay very much. Many will have human souls to be material: others make God himself a corporeal being.
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ -
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 WILHELM LEIBNIZ -
We may say, that not only the soul (the mirror of an indestructible universe) is indestructible, but also the animal itself is, although its mechanism is frequently destroyed in parts.
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ -
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.
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ -
The most perfect society is that whose purpose is the universal and supreme happiness.
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ -
..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.
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ -
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 WILHELM LEIBNIZ -
The past is pregnant with the present.
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ -
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 WILHELM LEIBNIZ -
I also readily admit that there are animals, taken in the ordinary sense, that are incomparably larger than those we know of, and I have sometimes said in jest that there might be a system like ours which is the pocketwatch of some enormous giant.
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ -
Imaginary numbers are a fine and wonderful refuge of the divine spirit almost an amphibian between being and non-being.
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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.
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Every 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 WILHELM LEIBNIZ -
The present is saturated with the past and pregnant with the future.
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ -
Music is a hidden arithmetic exercise of the soul, which does not know that it is counting.
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ