German philosopher & mathematician (1646-1716)
Why is there anything at all rather than nothing whatsoever?
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ
De rerum originatione radicali
If you have a clear idea of a soul, you will have a clear idea of a form; for it is of the same genus, though a different species.
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ
letter to Johann Bernoulli, November 18, 1698
There is a certain destiny of everything, regulated by the foreknowledge and providence of God in His works.
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ
attributed, Day's Collacon
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 WILHELM LEIBNIZ
La monadologie
I hold that it is only when we can prove everything we assert that we understand perfectly the thing under consideration.
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ
Philosophical Essays
Although the whole of this life were said to be nothing but a dream and the physical world nothing but a phantasm, I should call this dream or phantasm real enough, if, using reason well, we were never deceived by it.
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ
attributed, The World of Mathematics
The soul follows its own laws, and the body its own likewise, and they accord by virtue of the harmony pre-established among all substances, since they are all representations of one and the same universe.
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ
La monadologie
It is God who is the ultimate reason of things, and the Knowledge of God is no less the beginning of science than his essence and will are the beginning of things.
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ
Letter on a General Principle Useful in Explaining the Laws of Nature
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 WILHELM LEIBNIZ
letter to M. Hermann
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.
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ
letter to Johann Bernoulli, December 17, 1698
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 WILHELM LEIBNIZ
letter to Johann Bernoulli, January 13/23, 1699
To love is to find pleasure in the perfection of another.
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ
"Felicity", Leibniz: Political Writings
God produces the best not by necessity but because he wills it. Indeed, if anyone were to ask me whether God wills by necessity, I would request that he explain what he means by necessity by adding more detail, that is, I would request that he give a complete formulation of the question. For example, you might ask whether God wills by necessity or whether he wills freely, that is, because of his nature or because of his will. I respond that God, of course, cannot will voluntarily, otherwise there would be a will for willing on to infinity. Rather, we must say that God wills the best through his nature.
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ
"On Freedom and Possibility", Philosophical Essays
In whatever manner God created the world, it would always have been regular and in a certain general order. God, however, has chosen the most perfect, that is to say, the one which is at the same time the simplest in hypothesis and the richest in phenomena.
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ
Discours de métaphysique
Virtue is the habit of acting according to wisdom.
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ
"Felicity", Leibniz: Political Writings
There are two famous labyrinths where our reason very often goes astray. One concerns the great question of the free and the necessary, above all in the production and the origin of Evil. The other consists in the discussion of continuity, and of the indivisibles which appear to be the elements thereof, and where the consideration of the infinite must enter in.
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ
preface, Théodicée
I also readily admit that there are animals, taken in the ordinary sense, that are incomparably larger than those we know of, and I have sometimes said in jest that there might be a system like ours which is the pocketwatch of some enormous giant.
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ
letter to Johann Bernoulli, December 17, 1698
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 WILHELM LEIBNIZ
Discourse on Metaphysics
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 WILHELM LEIBNIZ
letter to Bourguet, 1712
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.
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ
letter to Johann Bernoulli, November 18, 1698