Quotes from Gottfried Leibniz

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

It is a good thing to proceed in order and to establish propositions. This is the way to gain ground and to progress with certainty.

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.

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

The monad, of which we shall speak here, is nothing but a simple substance which enters into compounds; simple, that is to say, without parts.

...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.

Men act like brutes in so far as the sequences of their perceptions arise through the principle of memory only, like those empirical physicians who have mere practice without theory.

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.

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.

The greatness of a life can only be estimated by the multitude of its actions. We should not count the years, it is our actions which constitute our life.

The art of discovering the causes of phenomena, or true hypotheses, is like the art of deciphering, in which an ingenious conjecture often greatly shortens the road.

I maintain also that substances, whether material or immaterial, cannot be conceived in their bare essence without any activity, activity being of the essence of substance in general.

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

A great doctor kills more people than a great general.

Make me the the master of education, and I will undertake to change the world.

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