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Gottfried Leibniz

32 quotes

• “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”

  Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) said by 1716 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: De arte characteristica ad perficiendas scientias ratione nitentes in C. I. Gerhardt (ed.), Die philosophischen Schriften von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (7 vols. 1875–1890) VII 200.

• “Languages are the best mirror of the human mind [and] the most ancient monu­ments of peoples.”

  Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) said by 1716 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Theologus: Amare autem? Philosophus: Felicitate alterius delectari.”

  Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) first seen 1673 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Confessio philosophi (1673)

• “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.”

  Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) first seen 1676 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Dissertatio Exoterica De Statu Praesenti et Incrementis Novissimis Deque Usu Geometriae (Spring 1676) Geometry and Monadology: Leibniz's Analysis Situs and Philosophy of Space

• “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 (1646–1716) first seen 1677 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Elements of True Piety (c. 1677), The Shorter Leibniz Texts (2006) edited by Lloyd H. Strickland, p. 189

• “Omne possibile exigit existere.”

  Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) first seen 1686 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: De veritatibus primis (1686)

• “Chaque substance est comme un monde à part, indépendant de toute autre chose, hors de Dieu...”

  Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) first seen 1686 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Discours de métaphysique (1686)

• “TO LOVE is to find pleasure in the happiness of others. Thus the habit of loving someone is nothing other than BENEVOLENCE by which we want the good of others, not for the profit that we gain from it, but because it is agreeable to us in itself. CHARITY is a general benevolence. And JUSTICE is charity in accordance with wisdom. … so that one does not do harm to someone without necessity, and that one does as much good as one can, but especially where it is best employed.”

  Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) first seen 1695 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: A Dialogue" (after 1695), as quoted in The Shorter Leibniz Texts (2006) edited by Lloyd H. Strickland, p. 170

• “Pour ce qui est des connaissances non-écrites qui se trouvent dispersées parmi les hommes de différents professions, je suis persuadé qu’ils passent de beaucoup tant à l'égard de la multitude que de l'importance, tout ce qui se trouve marqué dans les livres, et que la meilleure partie de notre trésor n'est pas encore enregistrée.”

  Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) first seen 1688 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Discours touchant la méthode de la certitude et de l'art d'inventer pour finir les disputes et pour faire en peu de temps de grands progrès (1688–1690)

• “Il y a jusque dans les exercices des enfants ce qui pourrait arrêter le plus grand Mathématicien.”

  Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) first seen 1688 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Discours touchant la méthode de la certitude et de l'art d'inventer pour finir les disputes et pour faire en peu de temps de grands progrès (1688–1690)

• “When Sir A. Fountaine was at Berlin with Leibnitz in 1701, and at supper with the Queen of Prussia, she asked Leibnitz his opinion of Sir Isaac Newton. Leibnitz said that taking mathematicians from the beginning of the world to the time when Sir Isaac lived, what he had done was much the better half; and added that he had consulted all the learned in Europe upon some difficult points without having any satisfaction, and that when he applied to Sir Isaac, he wrote him in answer by the first post, to do so and so, and then he would find it.”

  Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) first seen 1701 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Anecdote (1701) from John Conduitt's manuscript, as quoted by Sir David Brewster, Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton (1855) Vol.2

• “La nature ne fait jamais des sauts.”

  Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) first seen 1704 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Avant-propos to Nouveaux essais sur l'entendement humain (1704).

• “I have seen something of the project of M. de St. Pierre, for maintaining a perpetual peace in Europe. I am reminded of a device in a cemetery, with the words: Pax perpetua; for the dead do not fight any longer: but the living are of another humor; and the most powerful do not respect tribunals at all.”

  Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) first seen 1712 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Letter 11 to Grimarest: Passages Concerning the Abbe de St. Pierre's 'Project for Perpetual Peace (June 1712). Taken from Leibniz: Political Writings (2nd Edition, 1988), Edited by Patrick Riley.

• “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.”

  Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) first seen 1697 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Letter to Thomas Burnet (1697), as quoted in Platonism, Aristotelianism and Cabalism in the Philosophy of Leibniz (1938) by Joseph Politella, p. 18

• “Il y a deux labyrinthes fameux où notre raison s’égare bien souvent : l'un regarde la grande question du libre et du nécessaire, surtout dans la production et dans l'origine du mal ; l'autre consiste dans la discussion de la continuité et des indivisibles qui en paraissent les éléments, et où doit entrer la considération de l'infini.”

  Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) first seen 1710 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Théodicée (1710)ː Préface

• “Musica est exercitium arithmeticae occultum nescientis se numerare animi.”

  Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) first seen 1712 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Letter to Christian Goldbach, April 17, 1712.

• “It is an extremely useful thing to have knowledge of the true origins of memorable discoveries, especially those that have been found not by accident but by dint of meditation. It is not so much that thereby history may attribute to each man his own discoveries and others should be encouraged to earn like commendation, as that the art of making discoveries should be extended by considering noteworthy examples of it.”

  Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) first seen 1642 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Opening paragraph of Historia et Origo Calculi Differentialis (1714) Commercium epistolicum D. Joannis Collins et aliorum de analysi promota, see also Mathematische Schriften, Ed. C. I. Gerhardt, Georg Olms Verlag (1971…

• “J'ay marqué plus d'une fois, que je tenois l'espace pour quelque chose de purement relatif, comme le temps; pour un ordre des coëxistences, comme le temps est un ordre des successions.”

  Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) first seen 1716 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Third letter to Samuel Clarke, February 25, 1716

• “cur aliquid potius extiterit quam nihil”

  Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) first seen 1697 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: De rerum originatione radicali (1697); reprinted in God. Guil. Leibnitii Opera philosophica quae exstant latina, gallica, germanica omniaː 1 (1840), p. 148

• “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.”

  Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) said by 1716 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: As quoted in The World of Mathematics (1956) by J. R. Newman, p. 1832

• “De quelque manière que Dieu aurait créé le monde, il aurait toujours été régulier et dans un certain ordre général. Mais Dieu a choisi celui qui est le plus parfait, c’est-à-dire celui qui est en même temps le plus simple en hypothèses et le plus riche en phénomènes...”

  Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) first seen 1190 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Discours de métaphysique (1686); Leibniz famously tried to show that ours is the best of all possible worlds (see also Monadologie (53 & 54) below and compare Maimonides from Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), "Whatever…

• “Ce miracle de l'Analyse, prodige du monde des idées, objet presque amphibie entre l'Être et le Non-être, que nous appelons racine imaginaire.”

  Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) said by 1716 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Quoted in Singularités : individus et relations dans le système de Leibniz (2003) by Christiane Frémont

• “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.”

  Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) said by 1716 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Shorter Leibniz Texts (2006) edited by Lloyd H. Strickland, p. 111

• “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.”

  Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) first seen 1677 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Closing sentence of the Preface to the general science (1677) (in P. Wiener (ed.), Leibniz Selections, Macmilland Press Ltd, 1951).

• “Et comme tout présent état d'une substance simple est naturellement une suite de son état précédent, tellement, que le présent y est gros de l'avenir.”

  Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) said by 1716 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Il y a aussi deux sortes de vérités, celles de Raisonnement et celle de Fait. Les vérités de Raisonnement sont nécessaires et leur opposé est impossible, et celles de Fait sont contingentes et leur opposé est possible.”

  Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) said by 1716 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Or, comme il y a une infinité d'univers possibles dans les idées de Dieu, et qu'il n'en peut exister qu'un seul, il faut qu'il y ait une raison suffisante du choix de Dieu qui le détermine à l'un plutôt qu'à l'autre. Et cette raison ne peut se trouver que dans la convenance, dans les degrés de perfection que ces mondes contiennent, chaque possible ayant droit de prétendre à l'existence à mesure de la perfection qu'il enveloppe.”

  Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) said by 1716 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Thus there is nothing waste, nothing dead in the universe; no chaos, no confusions, save in appearence. We might compare this to the appearence of a pond in the distance, where we can see the confused movement and swarming of the fish, without distinguishing the fish themselves. Thus we are that each living body has a dominante entelechy, which in case of an animal is the soul, but the members of this living body are full of other living things, plants and animals, of which each has in turn ita dominant entelechy or soul.”

  Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) said by 1716 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Ainsi on peut dire que non seulement l'âme, miroir d'un univers indestructible, est indestructible, mais encore l'animal même, quoique sa machine périsse souvent en partie, et quitte ou prenne des dépouilles organiques.”

  Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) said by 1716 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “As regards the objection that possibles are independent of the decrees of God I grant it of actual decrees (although the Cartesians do not at all agree to this), but I maintain that the possible individual concepts involve certain possible free decrees; for example, if this world was only possible, the individual concept of a particular body in this world would involve certain movements as possible, it would also involve the laws of motion, which are the free decrees of God; but these, also, only as possibilities. Because, as there are an infinity of possible worlds, there are also an infinity of laws, certain ones appropriate to one; others, to another, and each possible individual of any world involves in its concept the laws of its world.”

  Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) first seen 1686 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: (May, 1686) as quoted in George R. Montgomery, Tr., "Correspondence between Leibniz and Arnauld," Leibniz: Discourse on metaphysics; correspondence with Arnauld, and Monadology (1916) VIII, p. 108

• “[The consequences of] beliefs that go against the providence of a perfectly good, wise, and just God, or against that immortality of souls which lays them open to the operations of justice.... I even find that somewhat similar opinions, by stealing gradually into the minds of men of high station who rule the rest and on whom affairs depend, and by slithering into fashionable books, are inclining everything toward the universal revolution with which Europe is threatened, and are completing the destruction of what still remains in the world of the generous Greeks and Romans who placed love of country and of the public good, and the welfare of before fortune and even before life.”

  Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) first seen 1704 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Nouveaux essais sur l'entendement humain (1704)

• “On est obligé d’ailleurs de confesser que la Perception et ce qui en dépend, est inexplicable par des raisons mécaniques, c’est-à-dire par les figures et par les mouvements. Et feignant qu'il y ait une Machine, dont la structure fasse penser, sentir, avoir perception ; on pourra la concevoir agrandie en conservant les mêmes proportions, en sorte qu’on y puisse entrer, comme dans un moulin. Et cela posé, on ne trouvera en la visitant au dedans, que des pièces, qui poussent les unes les autres, et jamais de quoi expliquer une perception. Ainsi c'est dans la substance simple, et non dans le composé, ou dans la machine qu’il la faut chercher.”

  Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) said by 1716 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source