Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Quotes

“This is the best of all possible worlds.”

— Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

He who hasn't tasted bitter things hasn't earned sweet things.

— Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

The present is big with the future.

— Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

There is nothing in the understanding which has not come from the senses, except the understanding itself, or the one who understands.

— Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

“Nothing is necessitated whose opposite is possible.”

— Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

“Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses, except the intellect itself.”

— Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

“Music is the hidden arithmetical exercise of a mind unconscious that it is calculating.”

— Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

It is unworthy of excellent men to lose hours like slaves in the labour of calculation which could safely be relegated to anyone else if machines were used.
(Describing, in 1685, the value to astronomers of the hand-cranked calculating machine he had invented in 1673.)

— Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

“Nature has established patterns originating in the return of events, but only for the most part. New illnesses flood the human race, so that no matter how many experiments you have done on corpses, you have not thereby immposd a limit on the nature of events so that in the future they could not vary.”

— Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

It is true that the more we see some connection in what happens to us, the more we are confirmed in the opinion we have about the reality of our appearances; and it is also true that the more we examine our appearances closely, the more we find them well-sequenced, as microscopes and other aids in making experiments have shown us.

— Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

“It is the knowledge of necessary and eternal truths that distinguishes us from the mere animals and gives us Reason and the sciences, raising us to the knowledge of ourselves and of God ...”

— Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

“The means of obtaining as much variety as possible, but with the greatest possible order ... is the means of obtaining as much perfection as possible.”

— Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

“Why is there something rather than nothing?”

— Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

“As far as we are capable of knowledge we sin in neglecting to acquire it ...”

— Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

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

— Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

“For the [innate] general principles enter into our thoughts, of which they form the soul and the connection. They are as necessary thereto as the muscles and sinews are for walking, although we do not at all think of them.”

— Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

“The mind leans on [innate] principles every moment, but it does not come so easily to distinguish them and to represent them distinctly and separately, because that demands great attention to its acts, and the majority of people, little accustomed to think, has little of it.”

— Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

“The mind is not only capable of knowing [innate ideas], but further of finding them in itself; and if it had only the simple capacity to receive knowledge ... it would not be the source of necessary truths ...”

— Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

“... every feeling is the perception of a truth ...”

— Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

“... if geometry were as much opposed to our passions and present interests as is ethics, we should contest it and violate I but little less, notwithstanding all the demonstrations of Euclid and Archimedes ...”

— Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz