Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Quotes

He who does not act does not exist.

...it is the knowledge of necessary and eternal truths that distinguishes us from the mere animals and gives us Reason and the sciences, raising us to the knowledge of ourselves and of God...

And just as the same town, when looked at from different sides, appears quite different and is, as it were, multiplied in perspective, so also it happens that because of the infinite number of simple substances, it is as if there were as many different universes, which are however but different perspective representations of a single universe form the different point of view of each monad.

The means of obtaining as much variety as possible, but with the greatest possible order...is the means of obtaining as much perfection as possible.

Perceptions which are at present insensible may grow some day: nothing is useless, and eternity provides great scope for change.

For all bodies are in perpetual flux like rivers, and parts are passing in and out of them continually.

imaginary numbers are a fine and wonderful resource of the divine intellect, almost an amphibian between being and non-being.

It is true that the more we see some connection in what happens to us, the more we are confirmed in the opinion we have about the reality of our appearances; and it is also true that the more we examine our appearances closely, the more we find them well-sequenced, as microscopes and other aids in making experiments have shown us.

Pourquoi y a-t-il quelque chose plutôt que rien ?

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.

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…

[...] we can find no true or existent fact, no true assertion, without there being a sufficient reason why it is thus and not otherwise, although most of the time these reasons cannot be known to us.

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

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.

Music is a calculation which the soul makes unconsciously in secret.