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

Categorized in : Europe Fighting Powerful

Take what you need, do what you should, you will get what you want.

Gottfried Leibniz

should want needs

Everything that is possible demands to exist.

Gottfried Leibniz

demand

It is unworthy of excellent men to lose hours like slaves in the labor of calculation which could be relegated to anyone else if machines were used.

Gottfried Leibniz

machines men science

The greatness of a life can only be estimated by the multitude of its actions. We should not count the years, it is our actions which constitute our life.

Gottfried Leibniz

our-actions greatness years

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

Gottfried Leibniz

soul doe exercise

Philosophy consists mostly of kicking up a lot of dust and then complaining that you can't see anything.

Gottfried Leibniz

dust complaining philosophy

Every mind has a horizon in respect to its present intellectual capacity but not in respect to its future intellectual capacity.

Gottfried Leibniz

horizon intellectual mind

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

mixtures evil believe

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

substance simple philosophy

Why is there anything at all rather than nothing whatsoever?

Gottfried Leibniz

Nothing is more important than to see the sources of invention which are, in my opinion more interesting than the inventions themselves.

Gottfried Leibniz

important math interesting

The most perfect society is that whose purpose

Gottfried Leibniz

purpose perfect happiness

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

delighted pleasure love-is

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

conformity perfect might

Nothing is necessitated whose opposite is possible.

Gottfried Leibniz

opposites

There are also two kinds of truths, those of reasoning and those of fact. Truths of reasoning are necessary and their opposite is impossible, and those of fact are contingent and their opposite is possible. When a truth is necessary its reason can be found by analysis, resolving it into more simple ideas and truths until we reach those which are primitive.

Gottfried Leibniz

simple opposites science

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

Gottfried Leibniz

amphibians unity numbers

The present is big with the future, the future might be read in the past, the distant is expressed in the near.

Gottfried Leibniz

bigs might past

In symbols one observes an advantage in discovery which is greatest when they express the exact nature of a thing briefly and, as it were, picture it; then indeed the labor of thought is wonderfully diminished.

Gottfried Leibniz

nature math science

The present is saturated with the past and pregnant with the future.

Gottfried Leibniz

saturated society past