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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 Wilhelm Leibniz

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.
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ

Demonstration Full God Lying Mindset Perfection Reason Truth Understand
The present is saturated with the past and pregnant with the future.
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ

Future Past Pregnant Present
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

Animal Clear Different Form Ideas Science Soul Yourself
The world is not a machine. Everything in it is force, life, thought.
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ

Force Life Machine Thinking World
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 WILHELM LEIBNIZ

Author Hold Myself Nature Perfection
It is necessary to believe that the mixture of evil has produced the greatest possible good: otherwise the evil would not have been permitted.
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ

Believe Evil Good Necessary Possible Production
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.
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ

Art Discover Greatness Road Short True
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

God Human Material Natural Religion Soul
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 WILHELM LEIBNIZ

Amount Delight Happiness Love Oneself
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

Animal Myself Ordinary System
I hold that it is only when we can prove everything we assert that we understand perfectly the thing under consideration.
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ

Evidence Hold Myself Perfection Understand
To love is to place happiness in the heart of another.
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ

Happiness Heart Love Place
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 LEIBNIZ

Expression Infinity Judgement Nature Organ Past Present Time Universe
Every substance is as a world apart, independent of everything else except God.
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ

Exception God Independent Substance World
I have said more than once, that I hold space to be something purely relative, as time; an order of coexistences, as time is an order of successions.
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ

Existence Hold Myself Order Space Time
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 WILHELM LEIBNIZ

Genuine Hold Mark Myself Nature Possible Reason