Loptimisme De Leibniz Quotes

... for although people can be made worse off by all other gifts, correct reasoning alone can only be for the good. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

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

Nature does not make leaps. ~ Gottfried Leibniz

Consistent with the liberal views of the Enlightenment, Leibniz was an optimist with respect to human reasoning and scientific progress. Although he was a great reader and admirer of Spinoza, Leibniz, being a confirmed deist, rejected emphatically Spinoza's pantheism. ~ Shelby D. Hunt

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

Nihil est sine ratione. There is nothing without a reason. ~ Gottfried Leibniz

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

The present is great with the future. ~ Gottfried Leibniz

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

Music is the hidden arithmetical exercise of a mind unconscious that it is calculating. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

There is nothing without reason. ~ Gottfried Leibniz

When the origin of remote peoples goes beyond history, our languages show themselves their oldest monuments ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

The present is big with the future. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

... every feeling is the perception of a truth ... ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

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

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

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

I do not conceive of any reality at all as without genuine unity. ~ Gottfried Leibniz

A great doctor kills more people than a great general. ~ Gottfried Leibniz

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

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

To love is to place happiness in the heart of another ... ~ 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

It's easier to be original and foolish than original and wise. ~ Gottfried Leibniz

TO LOVE is to find pleasure in the happiness of others. ~ Gottfried Leibniz

Reality cannot be found except in One single source, because of the interconnection of all things with one another. ~ Gottfried Leibniz

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

Nature has established patterns originating in the return of events, but only for the most part. New illnesses flood the human race, so that no matter how many experiments you have done on corpses, you have not thereby immposd a limit on the nature of events so that in the future they could not vary. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

The most perfect society is that whose purpose
is the universal and supreme happiness. ~ Gottfried Leibniz

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

All things in God are spontaneous. ~ Gottfried Leibniz

The past is pregnant with the present. ~ Gottfried Leibniz

It follows from what we have just said, that the natural changes of monads come from an internal principle, since an external cause would be unable to influence their inner being. ~ Gottfried Leibniz

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

The present is saturated with the past and pregnant with the future. ~ Gottfried Leibniz

It is true that as the empty voids and the dismal wilderness belong to zero, so the spirit of God and His light belong to the all-powerful One. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

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. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Music is a hidden arithmetic exercise of the soul, which does not know that it is counting. ~ Gottfried Leibniz

I don't say that bodies like flint, which are commonly called inanimate, have perceptions and appetition; rather they have something of that sort in them, as worms are in cheese. ~ Gottfried Leibniz

Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses, except the intellect itself. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

When a truth is necessary, the reason for it can be found by analysis, that is, by resolving it into simpler ideas and truths until the primary ones are reached. ~ Gottfried Leibniz

[Alternate translation:] The Divine Spirit found a sublime outlet in that wonder of analysis, that portent of the ideal world, that amphibian between being and not-being, which we call the imaginary root of negative unity. ~ Gottfried Leibniz

I also take it as granted that every created thing, and consequently the created monad also, is subject to change, and indeed that this change is continual in each one. ~ Gottfried 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

... 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 ... ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

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. ~ 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

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 ... ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

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. ~ Gottfried Leibniz

I have said more than once, that I hold space to be something purely relative, as time; an order of coexistences, as time is an order of successions. ~ Gottfried Leibniz

Taking mathematics from the beginning of the world to the time when Newton lived, what he had done was much the better half. ~ Gottfried Leibniz

It can have its effect only through the intervention of God, inasmuch as in the ideas of God a monad rightly demands that God, in regulating the rest from the beginning of things, should have regard to itself. ~ Gottfried Leibniz

Music is a secret and unconscious mathematical problem of the soul. ~ Gottfried Leibniz

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. ~ 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

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. ~ Gottfried Leibniz

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. ~ Gottfried Leibniz

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. ~ Gottfried Leibniz

Imaginary numbers are a fine and wonderful refuge of the divine spirit almost an amphibian between being and non-being. ~ Gottfried Leibniz

I also readily admit that there are animals, taken in the ordinary sense, that are incomparably larger than those we know of, and I have sometimes said in jest that there might be a system like ours which is the pocketwatch of some enormous giant. ~ Gottfried 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

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. ~ Gottfried Leibniz

In whatever manner God created the world, it would always have been regular and in a certain general order. God, however, has chosen the most perfect, that is to say, the one which is at the same time the simplest in hypothesis and the richest in phenomena. ~ Gottfried Leibniz

For the [innate] general principles enter into our thoughts, of which they form the soul and the connection. They are as necessary thereto as the muscles and sinews are for walking, although we do not at all think of them. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Our reasonings are grounded upon two great principles, that of contradiction, in virtue of which we judge false that which involves a contradiction, and true that which is opposed or contradictory to the false. ~ Gottfried Leibniz

But it is the knowledge of necessary and eternal truths which distinguishes us from mere animals, and gives us reason and the sciences, raising us to knowledge of ourselves and God. It is this in us which we call the rational soul or mind. ~ Gottfried Leibniz

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. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

It is unworthy of excellent men to lose hours like slaves in the labour of calculation which could safely be relegated to anyone else if machines were used.
(Describing, in 1685, the value to astronomers of the hand-cranked calculating machine he had invented in 1673.) ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

When God works miracles, he does not do it in order to supply the wants of nature, but those of grace. Whoever thinks otherwise, must needs have a very mean notion of the wisdom and power of God. ~ Gottfried Leibniz

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

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

For since it is impossible for a created monad to have a physical influence on the inner nature of another, this is the only way in which one can be dependent on another. ~ Gottfried Leibniz

For things remain possible, even if God does not choose them. Indeed, even if God does not will something to exist, it is possible for it to exist, since, by its nature, it could exist if God were to will it to exist. ~ Gottfried Leibniz

There never is absolute birth nor complete death, in the strict sense, consisting in the separation of the soul from the body. What we call births are developments and growths, while what we call deaths are envelopments and diminutions. ~ Gottfried Leibniz

God, possessing supreme and infinite wisdom, acts in the most perfect manner, not only metaphysically, but also morally speaking, and ... with respect to ourselves, we can say that the more enlightened and informed we are about God's works, the more we will be disposed to find them excellent and in complete conformity with what we might have desired. ~ Gottfried Leibniz

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. ~ Gottfried Leibniz

There are also two kinds of truths: truth of reasoning and truths of fact. Truths of reasoning are necessary and their opposite is impossible; those of fact are contingent and their opposite is possible. ~ Gottfried Leibniz

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. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Leibniz combines Aristotelian teleology in the notion that the nature of a thing provides for its unfolding in a certain fashion with the modern idea that the nature of a thing is within it. Because the forms are internal in the way that they are not with Aristotle, the harmony of the world has to be pre-established by God. ~ Charles Taylor

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. ~ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

There are also two kinds of truths, those of reasoning and those of fact. Truths of reasoning are necessary and their opposite is impossible: truths of fact are contingent and their opposite is possible. When a truth is necessary, reason can be found by analysis, resolving it into more simple ideas and truths, until we come to those which are primary. ~ Gottfried Leibniz

I love the French language. I have sampled every language, French is my favourite - fantastic language, especially to curse with. Nom de Dieu de putain de bordel de merde de saloperies de connards d'enculé de ta mère... It's like wiping your arse with silk, I love it. ~ Lana Wachowski

Happy the people whose annals are boring to read. ~ Charles-Louis De Secondat, Baron De La Brede Et De Montesquieu

Leibniz is proposing a strange inversion of what we normally mean when we describe a man as distinguished, or unique. Normally when we say these things, we mean that the man himself stands out from a crowd in some way. But Leibniz is saying that such a man's uniqueness is rooted in his ability to perceive the rest of the universe with unusual clarity - to distinguish one thing from another more effectively than ordinary souls." Roger ~ Neal Stephenson

None but tyrants have any business to be afraid. ~ Hardouin De Perefixe De Beaumont

Great thoughts come from the heart ~ Luc De Clapiers De Vauvenargues

Ingratitude calls forth reproaches as gratitude brings renewed kindnesses. ~ Marie De Rabutin-Chantal De Sevigne

Politeness costs little and yields much. ~ Anne-Therese De Marguenat De Courcelles

De wife she de eyes to de man's soul. How kin I see now, when I ain' gottee de eyes no mo'? ~ Zora Neale Hurston

There are many things we despise in order that we may not have to despise ourselves. ~ Luc De Clapiers De Vauvenargues

More are taken in by love than by cunning. ~ Luc De Clapiers De Vauvenargues

We must accustom ourselves to the follies of others and not be astonished at the foolishness that takes place in our presence. ~ Madeleine De Souvre, Marquise De ...

Leibniz's machine was designed to automate the dreary task of solving moral problems ~ Martin Cohen

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

What we call a brilliant thought is usually just a captivating expression which, with the help of a little truth, imposes a surprising error on us. ~ Luc De Clapiers De Vauvenargues

Would you be esteemed? live with persons that are estimable. ~ Anne-Therese De Marguenat De Courcelles

El Sueno de la razon produce monstrous. (The sleep of reason breeds monsters) ~ Francisco De Goya

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

I dislike clocks with second-hands; they cut up life into too small pieces. ~ Marie De Rabutin-Chantal, Marquise De Sevigne