G.w. Leibniz Quotes & Sayings

If pure philosophy took any of its ideas from Christian revelation, if anything in the Bible and the Gospel has passed into metaphysics, if, in short, it is inconceivable that the system of Descartes, Malebranche, and Leibniz would be what in fact they are had they been altogether withdrawn from Christian influence, then it becomes, highly probable that since the influence of Christianity on philosophy was a reality, the concept of Christian philosophy is not without a real meaning. — Etienne Gilson

Nature does not make leaps. — Gottfried Leibniz

It is worth noting that the notation facilitates discovery. This, in a most wonderful way, reduces the mind's labour. — Gottfried Leibniz

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

It is necessary to believe that the mixture of evil has produced the greatest possible good: otherwise the evil would not have been permitted. — Gottfried Leibniz

Ultimately, Leibniz argued, there are only two absolutely simple concepts, God and Nothingness. From these, all other concepts may be constructed, the world, and everything within it, arising from some primordial argument between the deity and nothing whatsoever. And then, by some inscrutable incandescent insight, Leibniz came to see that what is crucial in what he had written is the alternation between God and Nothingness. And for this, the numbers 0 and 1 suffice. — David Berlinski

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

It is not always the most brilliant speculations nor the choice of the most exotic materials that is most profitable. I prefer Monsieur de Reaumur busy exterminating moths by means of an oily fleece; or increasing fowl production by making them hatch without the help of their mothers, than Monsieur Bemouilli absorbed in algebra, or Monsieur Leibniz calculating the various advantages and disadvantages of the possible worlds. — Noel-Antoine Pluche

With an absurd oversimplification, the 'invention' of the calculus is sometimes ascribed to two men, Newton and Leibniz. In reality, the calculus is the product of a long evolution that was neither initiated nor terminated by Newton and Leibniz, but in which both played a decisive part. — Richard Courant

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

It appears that the solution of the problem of time and space is reserved to philosophers who, like Leibniz, are mathematicians, or to mathematicians who, like Einstein, are philosophers. — Hans Reichenbach

Leibniz was somewhat mean about money. When any young lady at the court of Hanover married, he used to give her what he called a "wedding present," consisting of useful maxims, ending up with the advice not to give up washing now that she had secured a husband. History does not record whether the brides were grateful. — Bertrand Russell

If we could sufficiently understand the order of the universe, we should find that it exceeds all the desires of the wisest men, and that it is impossible to make it better than it is, not only as a whole and in general but also for ourselves in particular, if we are attached, as we ought to be, to the Author of all, not only as to the architect and efficient cause of our being, but as to our master and to the final cause, which ought to be the whole aim of our will, and which can alone make our happiness. — Gottfried 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 Leibniz

if Newton is the finger, Leibniz is the stone, and they press against each other with equal and opposite force, a little bit harder every day. RAVENSCAR: — Neal Stephenson

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

The art of discovering the causes of phenomena, or true hypothesis, is like the art of decyphering, in which an ingenious conjecture greatly shortens the road. — Gottfried Leibniz

G. W. Leibniz, codiscoverer of calculus and a towering intellect of eighteenth-century Europe, wrote: "The first question which should rightly be asked is: Why is there something rather than nothing?"[1] In other words, why does anything at all exist? This, for Leibniz, is the most basic question that anyone can ask. Like me, Leibniz came to the conclusion that the answer is to be found, not in the universe of created things, but in God. God — William Lane Craig

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

Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. — G.K. Chesterton

The mind leans on [innate] principles every moment, but it does not come so easily to distinguish them and to represent them distinctly and separately, because that demands great attention to its acts, and the majority of people, little accustomed to think, has little of it. — Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

The present is big with the future, the future might be read in the past, the distant is expressed in the near. — Gottfried Leibniz

Finally there are simple ideas of which no definition can be given; there are also axioms or postulates, or in a word primary principles, which cannot be proved and have no need of proof. — Gottfried Leibniz

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

This interconnection or accommodation of all created things to each other, and each to all the others, brings it about that each simple substance has relations that express all the others, and consequently, that each simple substance is a perpetual, living mirror of the universe. — Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

The mind is not only capable of knowing [innate ideas], but further of finding them in itself; and if it had only the simple capacity to receive knowledge ... it would not be the source of necessary truths ... — Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

There is nothing in the understanding which has not come from the senses, except the understanding itself, or the one who understands. — 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 Leibniz

And yet viewing several depictions of even an imaginary city, is enlightening in a way," Leibniz said. "Each painter can view the city from only one standpoint at a time, so he will move about the place, and paint it from a hilltop on one side, then a tower on the other, then from a grand intersection in the middle
all in the same canvas. When we look at the canvas, then, we glimpse in a small way how God understands the universe
for he sees it from every point of view at once. By populating the world with so many different minds, each with its own point of view, God gives us a suggestion of what it means to be omniscient. — Neal Stephenson

Leibniz dedicated his life to efforts to educate people to understand that true happiness is found by locating their identity in benefitting mankind and their posterity. — Robert Trout

Shut up about Leibniz for a moment, Rudy, because look here: You - Rudy - and I are on a train, as it were, sitting in the dining car, having a nice conversation, and that train is being pulled along at a terrific clip by certain locomotives named The Bertrand Russell and Riemann and Euler and others. And our friend Lawrence is running alongside the train, trying to keep up with us - it's not that we're smarter than he is, necessarily, but that he's a farmer who didn't get a ticket. And I, Rudy, am simply reaching out through the open window here, trying to pull him onto the fucking train with us so that the three of us can have a nice little chat about mathematics without having to listen to him panting and gasping for breath the whole way. — Neal Stephenson

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

Why is there anything at all rather than nothing whatsoever? — Gottfried 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 Leibniz