Gottfried Leibniz Quotes - Page 4

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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.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Mind, Infinite, Reason

  "The Shorter Leibniz Texts: A Collection of New Translations". Book edited by Lloyd H. Strickland, p. 11, 2006.

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• There is a world of created beings - living things, animals, entelechies, and souls - in the least part of matter.... Thus there is nothing waste, nothing sterile, nothing dead in the universe; no chaos, no confusions, save in appearance.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Animal, Confusion, Soul

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• There never is absolute birth nor complete death, in the strict sense, consisting in the separation of the soul from the body. What we call births are developments and growths, while what we call deaths are envelopments and diminutions.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Soul, Growth, Development

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• Reality cannot be found except in One single source, because of the interconnection of all things with one another. I maintain also that substances, whether material or immaterial, cannot be conceived in their bare essence without any activity, activity being of the essence of substance in general.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Reality, Essence, Words Of Wisdom

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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.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Life, Dream, Real

  "The World of Mathematics". Book by James R. Newman, p. 1832, 1956.

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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.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Animal, Giving, Soul

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• According to their [Newton and his followers] doctrine, God Almighty wants to wind up his watch from time to time: otherwise it would cease to move. He had not, it seems, sufficient foresight to make it a perpetual motion. Nay, the machine of God's making, so imperfect, according to these gentlemen; that he is obliged to clean it now and then by an extraordinary concourse, and even to mend it, as clockmaker mends his work.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  God, Moving, Wind

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• Every substance is as a world apart, independent of everything else except God.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Independent, Substance, World

  "Discourse on Metaphysics". Book by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, 1686.

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• God makes nothing without order, and everything that forms itself develops imperceptibly out of small parts.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Order, Form, Small Parts

  Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (2008). “Protogaea”, p.3, University of Chicago Press

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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 Leibniz

  Soul, Decay, Natural

  Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (2015). “Leibniz: Philosophical Essays”, p.320, Hackett Publishing

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• 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.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Order, Words Of Wisdom, Progress

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• 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.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Words Of Wisdom, Granted, Subjects

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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.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  God, Order, Perfection

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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.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Mean, Thinking, Order

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• 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.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Reality, Perfect, Atheism

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• 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 Leibniz

  Ideas, Soul, Different

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• There are two famous labyrinths where our reason very often goes astray. One concerns the great question of the free and the necessary, above all in the production and the origin of Evil. The other consists in the discussion of continuity, and of the indivisibles which appear to be the elements thereof, and where the consideration of the infinite must enter in.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Two, Evil, Labyrinth

  "Théodicée". Preface to the book by Gottfried Leibniz, 1710.

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• 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

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Keys, Secret, Problem

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• 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 Leibniz

  Taken, Animal, Ordinary

  Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (2015). “Leibniz: Philosophical Essays”, p.170, Hackett Publishing

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• Music is nothing but unconscious arithmetic.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Playing Music, Arithmetic, Music Is

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• There is no argument so cogent not only in demonstrating, the indestructibility of the soul, but also in showing that it always preserves in its nature traces of all its preceding states with a practical remembrance which can always be aroused. Since it has the consciousness of or knows in itself what each one calls his me. This renders it open to moral qualities, to chastisement and to recompense even after this life, for immortality without remembrance would be of no value.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Karma, Remembrance, Soul

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• Of what use would it be to you, sir, to become King of China on condition that you forgot what you have been? Would it not be the same as if God, at the same time he destroyed you, created a King in China?

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Kings, Use, Reincarnation

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• In whatever manner God created the world, it would always have been regular and in a certain general order. God, however, has chosen the most perfect, that is to say, the one which is at the same time the simplest in hypothesis and the richest in phenomena.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Order, Perfect, World

  Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (2008). “Discourse on Metaphysics and the Monadology”, p.11, Cosimo, Inc.

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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.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Science, Defining, Term

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• The dot was introduced as a symbol for multiplication by Leibniz. On July 29, 1698, he wrote in a letter to Johann Bernoulli: "I do not like X as a symbol for multiplication, as it is easily confounded with x.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  July, Letters, Dots

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