Gottfried Leibniz Quotes

The present is great with the future.

Now where there are no parts, there neither extension, nor shape, nor divisibility is possible. And these monads are the true atoms of nature and, in a word, the elements of things.

Whence it follows that God is absolutely perfect, since perfection is nothing but magnitude of positive reality, in the strict sense, setting aside the limits or bounds in things which are limited.

..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.

There is nothing without reason.

Justice is charity in accordance with wisdom.

I also take it as granted that every created thing, and consequently the created monad also, is subject to change, and indeed that this change is continual in each one.

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.

Music is nothing but unconscious arithmetic.

Music is a secret and unconscious mathematical problem of the soul.

Virtue is the habit of acting according to wisdom.

He who understands Archimedes and Apollonius will admire less the achievements of the foremost men of later times.

A great doctor kills more people than a great general.

Indeed in general I hold that there is nothing truer than happiness, and nothing happier and sweeter than truth.

It is a good thing to proceed in order and to establish propositions. This is the way to gain ground and to progress with certainty.

To love is to place happiness in the heart of another.

Therefore, I have attacted [the problem of the catenary] which I had hitherto not attempted, and with my key [the differential calculus] happily opened its secret. Acta eruditorum

And there must be simple substances, because there are compounds; for the compound is nothing but a collection or aggregatum of simples.

For since it is impossible for a created monad to have a physical influence on the inner nature of another, this is the only way in which one can be dependent on another.

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.

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.

But in simple substances the influence of one monad over another is ideal only.

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.

The past is pregnant with the present.

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.

Nature does not make leaps.

When a truth is necessary, the reason for it can be found by analysis, that is, by resolving it into simpler ideas and truths until the primary ones are reached.