Gottfried Leibniz Quotes - Page 5

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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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• 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. It is this way that in mathematics speculative theorems and practical canons are reduced by analysis to definitions, axioms and postulates.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Ideas, Words Of Wisdom, Analysis

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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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• 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.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Perception, Body, Cheese

  Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (2015). “Leibniz: Philosophical Essays”, p.169, Hackett Publishing

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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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• 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.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Spirit, Craftsman, Relation

  Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (2015). “Leibniz: Philosophical Essays”, p.171, Hackett Publishing

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• We should like Nature to go no further; we should like it to be finite, like our mind; but this is to ignore the greatness and majesty of the Author of things.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  God, Nature, Science

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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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• For, above all, I hold a notion of possibility and necessity according to which there are some things that are possible, but yet not necessary, and which do not really exist. From this it follows that a reason that always forces a free mind to choose one thing over another (whether that reason derives from the perfection of a thing, as it does in God, or from our imperfection) does not eliminate our freedom.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Perfection, Mind, Doe

  Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (2015). “Leibniz: Philosophical Essays”, p.20, Hackett Publishing

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• Let there be two possible things, A and B, one of which is such that it is necessary that it exists, and let us assume that there is more perfection in A than in B. Then, at least, we can explain why A should exist rather than B and can foresee which of them will exist; indeed, this can be demonstrated, that is, rendered certain from the nature of the thing.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Two, Perfection, Assuming

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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.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Men, Ideas, Imagination

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• I have seen something of the project of M. de St. Pierre, for maintaining a perpetual peace in Europe. I am reminded of a device in a cemetery, with the words: Pax perpetua ; for the dead do not fight any longer: but the living are of another humor; and the most powerful do not respect tribunals at all.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Powerful, Fighting, Europe

  Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Patrick Riley (1988). “Leibniz: Political Writings”, p.183, Cambridge University Press

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• [Alternate translation:] The Divine Spirit found a sublime outlet in that wonder of analysis, that portent of the ideal world, that amphibian between being and not-being, which we call the imaginary root of negative unity.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Science, Roots, Sublime

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• It has long seemed ridiculous to me to suppose that the nature of things has been so poor and stingy that it provided souls only to such a trifling mass of bodies on our globe, like human bodies, when it could have given them to all, without interfering with its other ends.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Long, Soul, Body

  Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (2015). “Leibniz: Philosophical Essays”, p.168, Hackett Publishing

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

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Philosophical, Simple, Substance

  Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (2015). “Leibniz: Philosophical Essays”, p.219, Hackett Publishing

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• 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.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Way, Impossible, Influence

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• For things remain possible, even if God does not choose them. Indeed, even if God does not will something to exist, it is possible for it to exist, since, by its nature, it could exist if God were to will it to exist.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Doe, Ifs

  Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (2015). “Leibniz: Philosophical Essays”, p.21, Hackett Publishing

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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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• 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.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Words Of Wisdom, Atoms, Elements

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