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 More Quotes by Gottfried Leibniz More Quotes From Gottfried Leibniz If we were magically shrunk and put into someone's brain while she was thinking, we would see all the pumps, pistons, gears and levers working away and we would be able to describe the workings completely, in mechanical terms, thereby completely describing the thought processes of the brain. But that description would not contain any mention of thought! It would contain nothing but descriptions of pumps, pistons, levers! Gottfried Leibniz would-be brain thinking Music is the pleasure the human mind experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting. Gottfried Leibniz music math science Nihil est sine ratione. There is nothing without a reason. Gottfried Leibniz reason Reality cannot be found except in One single source, because of the interconnection of all things with one another. Gottfried Leibniz source found reality Now, as there is an infinity of possible universes in the Ideas of God, and as only one of them can exist, there must be a sufficient reason for God's choice, which determines him toward one rather than another. And this reason can be found only in the fitness, or the degrees of perfection, that these worlds contain, since each possible thing has the right to claim existence in proportion to the perfection it involves. Gottfried Leibniz choices perfection ideas We may say, that not only the soul (the mirror of an indestructible universe) is indestructible, but also the animal itself is, although its mechanism is frequently destroyed in parts. Gottfried Leibniz indestructible mirrors soul 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 nature law science It is worth noting that the notation facilitates discovery. This, in a most wonderful way, reduces the mind's labour. Gottfried Leibniz mind discovery science All the different classes of beings which taken together make up the universe are, in the ideas of God who knows distinctly their essential gradations, only so many ordinates of a single curve so closely united that it would be impossible to place others between any two of them, since that would imply disorder and imperfection. Thus men are linked with the animals, these with the plants and these with the fossils which in turn merge with those bodies which our senses and our imagination represent to us as absolutely inanimate. Gottfried Leibniz taken animal men 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 essence god science Thus God alone is the primary Unity, or original simple substance, from which all monads, created and derived, are produced. Gottfried Leibniz words-of-wisdom unity simple 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 infinite reason mind 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 craftsman spirit relation Natural religion itself, seems to decay very much. Many will have human souls to be material: others make God himself a corporeal being. Gottfried Leibniz decay soul natural Let there be two possible things, A and B, one of which is such that it is necessary that it exists, and let us assume that there is more perfection in A than in B. Then, at least, we can explain why A should exist rather than B and can foresee which of them will exist; indeed, this can be demonstrated, that is, rendered certain from the nature of the thing. Gottfried Leibniz assuming perfection two What is is what must be. Gottfried Leibniz science Now this connection or adaption of all created things with each, and of each with all the rest, means that each simple substance has relations which express all the others, and that consequently it is a perpetual living mirror of the universe. Gottfried Leibniz mirrors simple mean The world is not a machine. Everything in it is force, life, thought. Gottfried Leibniz machines force world 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 done time science There are also two kinds of truths: truth of reasoning and truths of fact. Gottfried Leibniz philosophical two facts
