Quotes from 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.

The pleasure we obtain from music comes from counting, but counting unconsciously. Music is nothing but unconscious arithmetic.

Nature does not make leaps.

The words 'Here you can find perfect peace' can be written only over the gates of a cemetery.

Every present state of a simple substance is the natural consequence of its preceding state, in such a way that its present is big with its future.

Philosophy consists mostly of kicking up a lot of dust and then complaining that you can't see anything.

We live in the best of all possible worlds

There is a certain destiny of everything, regulated by the foreknowledge and providence of God in His works.

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

All things in God are spontaneous.

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

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.

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.

Natural religion itself, seems to decay very much. Many will have human souls to be material: others make God himself a corporeal being.

Every mind has a horizon in respect to its present intellectual capacity but not in respect to its future intellectual capacity.

The knowledge which we have acquired ought not to resemble a great shop without order, and without an inventory; we ought to know what we possess, and be able to make it serve us in need.

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.

It is God who is the ultimate reason things, and the Knowledge of God is no less the beginning of science than his essence and will are the beginning of things.

What is is what must be.

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.

It is unworthy of excellent men to lose hours like slaves in the labor of calculation which could be relegated to anyone else if machines were used.

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.

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

The present is saturated with the past and pregnant with the future.