Why is there anything at all rather than nothing whatsoever?
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZWe 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.
More Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Quotes
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The pleasure we obtain from music comes from counting, but counting unconsciously. Music is nothing but unconscious arithmetic.
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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.
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When God works miracles, he does not do it in order to supply the wants of nature, but those of grace. Whoever thinks otherwise, must needs have a very mean notion of the wisdom and power of God.
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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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The world is not a machine. Everything in it is force, life, thought.
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Reality cannot be found except in One single source, because of the interconnection of all things with one another.
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It is necessary to believe that the mixture of evil has produced the greatest possible good: otherwise the evil would not have been permitted.
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Nature does not make leaps.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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Nothing is accomplished all at once, and it is one of my great maxims, and one of the most completely verified, that Nature makes no leaps: a maxim which I have called the law of continuity.
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He who understands Archimedes and Apollonius will admire less the achievements of the foremost men of later times.
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Nothing is necessitated whose opposite is possible.
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All things in God are spontaneous.
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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.
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A great doctor kills more people than a great general.
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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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The words ‘Here you can find perfect peace’ can be written only over the gates of a cemetery.
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Everything that is possible demands to exist.
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Thus God alone is the primary Unity, or original simple substance, from which all monads, created and derived, are produced.
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We live in the best of all possible worlds.
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Music is a hidden arithmetic exercise of the soul, which does not know that it is counting.
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ