Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Quotes

Music is the hidden arithmetical exercise of a mind unconscious that it is calculating.

Nihil est sine ratione.
[There is nothing without a reason.]

…if geometry were as much opposed to our passions and present interests as is ethics, we should contest it and violate I but little less, notwithstanding all the demonstrations of Euclid and Archimedes…

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.

For I hold that it is only when we can prove everything we assert that we understand perfectly the thing under consideration.

Nam filum labyrintho de compositione continui deque maximo et minimo ac indesignabili at que infinito non nisi geometria praebere potest, ad metaphysicam vero solidam nemo veniet, nisi qui illac transiverit.

quando orientur controversiae, non magis disputatione opus erit inter duos philosophos, quam inter duos computistas. Sufficiet enim calamos in manus sumere sedereque ad abacos, et sibi mutuo (accito si placet amico) dicere: calculemus

I have so many ideas that may perhaps be of some use in time if others more penetrating than I go deeply into them someday and join the beauty of their minds to the labour of mine.

Thus it may be said that not only the soul, the mirror of an indestructible universe, is indestructible, but also the animal itself, though its mechanism may often perish in part and take off or put on an organic slough.

Lieben heißt, unser Glück in das Glück eines anderen zu legen.

Why is there anything at all rather than nothing whatsoever?

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.

Không có toán học chúng ta không thể đi sâu vào triết học. Không có triết học chúng ta không thể đi sâu vào toán học. Không có cả hai chúng ta không thể đi sâu vào bất cứ thứ gì

Wer seine Schüler das Abc gelehrt, hat eine größere Tat vollbracht als der Feldherr, der eine Schlacht geschlagen.

He who hasn't tasted bitter things hasn't earned sweet things.