31 quotes
And as every present state of a simple substance is naturally a consequence of its preceding state, so its present is pregnant with its future.
The Monadology (1714)
Everything that is possible demands to exist.
De veritatibus primis (1686)
Every substance is as a world apart, independent of everything else except God.
Discours de métaphysique (1686)
Music is a hidden arithmetic exercise of the soul, which does not know that it is counting.
Why is there anything at all rather than nothing whatsoever?
De rerum originatione radicali (1697)
TO LOVE is to find pleasure in the happiness of others.
A Dialogue (1696)
When a rule is extremely complex, that which conforms to it passes for irregular (random).
Discourse on Metaphysics (1686)
Even in the games of children there are things to interest the greatest mathematician.
This miracle of analysis, this marvel of the world of ideas, an almost amphibian object between Being and Non-being that we call the imaginary number.
Singularités : individus et relations dans le système de Leibniz (2003)
There are two kinds of truths: those of reasoning and those of fact. The truths of reasoning are necessary and their opposite is impossible; the truths of fact are contingent and their opposites are possible.
The Monadology (1714)
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.
The Elements of True Piety (1677)
We never have a full demonstration, although there is always an underlying reason for the truth, even if it is only perfectly understood by God, who alone penetrated the infinite series in one stroke of the mind.
The Shorter Leibniz Texts (2006)
I am convinced that the unwritten knowledge scattered among men of different callings surpasses in quantity and in importance anything we find in books, and that the greater part of our wealth has yet to be recorded.
Languages are the best mirror of the human mind [and] the most ancient monuments of peoples.
Reason is the linking together of truths, but particularly (when it is compared with faith) of those to which the human mind can attain naturally without being helped by the light of faith.
It is worth noting that the notation facilitates discovery. This, in a most wonderful way, reduces the mind's labour.
The object of faith is the truth, which God has revealed in an extraordinary way
Although the whole of this life were said to be nothing but a dream and the physical world nothing but a phantasm, I should call this dream or phantasm real enough, if, using reason well, we were never deceived by it.
The World of Mathematics (1956)
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.
The love of God consists in an ardent desire to procure the general welfare, and reason teaches me that there is nothing which contributes more to the general welfare of mankind than the perfection of reason.
Closing sentence of the Preface to the general science (1677)