In 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.
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZMen 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.
More Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Quotes
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Make me the the master of education, and I will undertake to change the world.
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I hold that it is only when we can prove everything we assert that we understand perfectly the thing under consideration.
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One cannot explain words without making incursions into the sciences themselves, as is evident from dictionaries; and, conversely, one cannot present a science without at the same time defining its terms.
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The present is great with the future.
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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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A distinction must be made between true and false ideas, and that too much rein must not be given to a man’s imagination under pretext of its being a clear and distinct intellection.
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Virtue is the habit of acting according to wisdom.
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It 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.
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Every substance is as a world apart, independent of everything else except God.
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Nature does not make leaps.
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Indeed in general I hold that there is nothing truer than happiness, and nothing happier and sweeter than truth.
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To love is to place happiness in the heart of another.
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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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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.
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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.
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Imaginary numbers are a fine and wonderful refuge of the divine spirit almost an amphibian between being and non-being.
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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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But it is the knowledge of necessary and eternal truths which distinguishes us from mere animals, and gives us reason and the sciences, raising us to knowledge of ourselves and God. It is this in us which we call the rational soul or mind.
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Although the whole of this life were said to be nothing but a dream and the physical world nothing but a phantasm, I should call this dream or phantasm real enough, if, using reason well, we were never deceived by it.
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He who hasn’t tasted bitter things hasn’t earned sweet things.
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We live in the best of all possible worlds.
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Music is nothing but unconscious arithmetic.
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The knowledge which we have acquired ought not to resemble a great shop without order, and without an inventory; we ought to know what we possess, and be able to make it serve us in need.
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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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I do not conceive of any reality at all as without genuine unity.
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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