Top Gottfried Leibniz Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

Gottfried Leibniz Biography

Gottfried Leibniz

Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz (/ˈlaɪbnɪts/; German: [ˈɡɔtfʁiːt ˈvɪlhɛlm fɔn ˈlaɪbnɪts] or [ˈlaɪpnɪts]; French: Godefroi Guillaume Leibnitz; 1 July 1646 [O.S. 21 June] – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath and philosopher who occupies a prominent place in the history of mathematics and the history of philosophy, having developed differential and integral calculus independently of Isaac Newton. Leibniz's notation has been widely used ever since it was published. It was only in the 20th century that his Law of Continuity and Transcendental Law of Homogeneity found mathematical implementation (by means of non-standard analysis). He became one of the most prolific inventors in the field of mechanical calculators. While working on adding automatic multiplication and division to Pascal's calculator, he was the first to describe a pinwheel calculator in 1685 and invented the Leibniz wheel, used in the arithmometer, the first mass-produced mechanical calculator. He also refined the binary number system, which is the foundation of virtually all digital computers.

Read about Gottfried Leibniz in Wikipedia

Random Authors

Gottfried Leibniz Quotes

The world is not a machine. Everything in it is force, life, thought.

Force, Life, Machine, Machines, World

There is nothing waste, nothing sterile, nothing dead in the universe; no chaos, no confusions, save in appearance.

Appearance, Chaos, Confusion, Nothing, Waste

It has long seemed ridiculous to me to suppose that the nature of things has been so poor and stingy that it provided souls only to such a trifling mass of bodies on our globe, like human bodies, when it could have given them to all, without interfering with its other ends.

Body, Globe, Long, Mass, Soul, Trifling

I hold that it is only when we can prove everything we assert that we understand perfectly the thing under consideration.

Assert, Consideration, Everything, Prove, Under

To love is to take delight in happiness of another, or, what amounts to the same thing, it is to account another's happiness as one's own.

Account, Amounts, Delight, Happiness And Love, 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.

Acts, Conformity, Disposed, Might, Perfect, Works

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.

Full, Infinite, Mind, Reason, Truth, Underlying

Everything that is possible demands to exist.

Demand, Demands, Everything, Exist, Possible

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.

Science, Simple, Opposites, Reason, Reasoning, Found

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.

Body, Cheese, Flint, Like, Perception, Sort

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

Mathematical, Problem, Secret, Soul, Unconscious

Of what use would it be to you, sir, to become King of China on condition that you forgot what you have been? Would it not be the same as if God, at the same time he destroyed you, created a King in China?

Become, China, Kings, Reincarnation, Use

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

Everything, Form, Imperceptibly, Order, Parts, Small Parts

For, above all, I hold a notion of possibility and necessity according to which there are some things that are possible, but yet not necessary, and which do not really exist. From this it follows that a reason that always forces a free mind to choose one thing over another (whether that reason derives from the perfection of a thing, as it does in God, or from our imperfection) does not eliminate our freedom.

Derives, Doe, Exist, Mind, Perfection, Thing

Indeed in general I hold that there is nothing truer than happiness, and nothing happier and sweeter than truth.

General, Happier, Hold, Nothing, Sweeter, Words Of Wisdom

There are also two kinds of truths: truth of reasoning and truths of fact.

Fact, Facts, Philosophical, Truth, Truths, Two

The past is pregnant with the present.

Past, Pregnant, Present

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.

Causes, Ideas, Mark, Possibility, Proved, Words Of Wisdom

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

Past, Society, Saturated, Pregnant, Future, Present

Men act like brutes in so far as the sequences of their perceptions arise through the principle of memory only, like those empirical physicians who have mere practice without theory.

Arise, Memories, Men, Perceptions, Practice, Theory

1