Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz - Nature Quotes

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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 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
I hold that the mark of a genuine idea is that its possibility can be proved, either a priori by conceiving its cause or reason, or a posteriori when experience teaches us that it is in fact in nature.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Indeed every monad must be different from every other. For there are never in nature two beings, which are precisely alike, and in which it is not possible to find some difference which is internal, or based on some intrinsic quality.

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
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
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.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
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 Wilhelm Leibniz
Atoms are the effect of the weakness of our imagination, for it likes to rest and therefore hurries to arrive at a conclusion in subdivisions or analyses; this is not the case in Nature, which comes from the infinite and goes to the infinite. Atoms satisfy only the imagination, but they shock the higher reason.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
The beauty of nature is so great and its contemplation so sweet... whoever tastes it can't help but view all other amusements as inferior.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
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 Wilhelm Leibniz
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 Wilhelm Leibniz
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 Wilhelm Leibniz
The machines of nature, namely, living bodies, are still machines in their smallest parts ad infinitum.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
In my judgment an organic machine new to nature never arises, since it always contains an infinity of organs so that it can express, in its own way, the whole universe; indeed, it always contains all past and present times.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz