Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Quotes

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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 of God. It is this in us which we call the rational soul or Mind.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
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.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
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 Wilhelm Leibniz
As there are an infinity of possible worlds, there are also an infinity of laws, certain ones appropriate to one; others, to another, and each possible individual of any world involves in its concept the laws of its world.

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

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
TO LOVE is to find pleasure in the happiness of others. Thus the habit of loving someone is nothing other than BENEVOLENCE by which we want the good of others, not for the profit that we gain from it, but because it is agreeable to us in itself.
CHARITY is a general benevolence. And JUSTICE is charity in accordance with wisdom. … so that one does not do harm to someone without necessity, and that one does as much good as one can, but especially where it is best employed.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
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 Wilhelm Leibniz
Now, as there is an infinity of possible universes in the Ideas of God, and as only one of them can exist, there must be a sufficient reason for God's choice, which determines him toward one rather than another. And this reason can be found only in the fitness, or the degrees of perfection, that these worlds contain, since each possible thing has the right to claim existence in proportion to the perfection it involves.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
To love is to be delighted by the happiness of someone, or to experience pleasure upon the happiness of another. I define this as true love.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
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 Wilhelm Leibniz
I often say a great doctor kills more people than a great general.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Theologian: But what is to love?
Philosopher: To be delighted by the happiness of another.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Every substance is as a world apart, independent of everything else except God.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Music is a hidden arithmetic exercise of the soul, which does not know that it is counting.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Those who have more power are liable to sin more; no theorem in geometry is more certain than this.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
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 Wilhelm Leibniz
And as every present state of a simple substance is naturally a consequence of its preceding state, so its present is pregnant with its future.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
I am convinced that the unwritten knowledge scattered among men of different callings surpasses in quantity and in importance anything we find in books, and that the greater part of our wealth has yet to be recorded.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Thus God alone is the primary Unity, or original simple substance, from which all monads, created and derived, are produced.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
I do not conceive of any reality at all as without genuine unity.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
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 Wilhelm Leibniz
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 Wilhelm Leibniz
Our reasonings are grounded upon two great principles, that of contradiction, in virtue of which we judge false that which involves a contradiction, and true that which is opposed or contradictory to the false.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Everything that is possible demands to exist.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
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 Wilhelm Leibniz
Even in the games of children there are things to interest the greatest mathematician.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
My philosophical views approach somewhat closely those of the late Countess of Conway, and hold a middle position between Plato and Democritus, because I hold that all things take place mechanically as Democritus and Descartes contend against the views of Henry More and his followers, and hold too, nevertheless, that everything takes place according to a living principle and according to final causes — all things are full of life and consciousness, contrary to the views of the Atomists.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
These principles have given me a way of explaining naturally the union or rather the mutual agreement [conformité] of the soul and the organic body. The soul follows its own laws, and the body likewise follows its own laws; and they agree with each other in virtue of the pre-established harmony between all substances, since they are all representations of one and the same universe.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz