28 Quotes by 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."

"And just as the same town, when looked at from different sides, appears quite different and is, as it were, multiplied in perspective, so also it happens that because of the infinite number of simple substances, it is as if there were as many different universes, which are however but different perspective representations of a single universe form the different point of view of each monad."

"This interconnection or accommodation of all created things to each other, and each to all the others, brings it about that each simple substance has relations that express all the others, and consequently, that each simple substance is a perpetual, living mirror of the universe."

"If you could blow the brain up to the size of a mill and walk about inside, you would not find consciousness."

"La tranquillité est un degré pour avancer vers la stupidité. . . Il faut toujours trouver quelque chose à faire, penser, projeter, s'intéresser, pour le public et pour le particulier, mais cela d'une manière qui nous réjouisse, si nos souhaits sont accomplis et ne nous chagrine point en cas qu'ils manquent."

"...as far as we are capable of knowledge we sin in neglecting to acquire it..."

"He who does not act does not exist."

"He who hasn’t tasted bitter things hasn’t earned sweet things."

"I have so many ideas that may perhaps be of some use in time if others more penetrating than I go deeply into them someday and join the beauty of their minds to the labour of mine."

"I don’t really eliminate body, but reduce it to what it is. For I show that corporeal mass, which is thought to have something over and above simple substances, is not a substance, but a phenomenon resulting from simple substances, which alone have unity and absolute reality."