Gottfried Leibniz
Gottfried Leibniz
Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibnizwas 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. He became one of the most prolific inventors in the field of mechanical calculators. While...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth1 July 1646
CityLeipzig, Germany
CountryGermany
Gottfried Leibniz quotes about
There are also two kinds of truths: truth of reasoning and truths of fact.
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.
[Alternate translation:] The Divine Spirit found a sublime outlet in that wonder of analysis, that portent of the ideal world, that amphibian between being and not-being, which we call the imaginary root of negative unity.
We should like Nature to go no further; we should like it to be finite, like our mind; but this is to ignore the greatness and majesty of the Author of things.
The most perfect society is that whose purpose is the universal and supreme happiness.
It is worth noting that the notation facilitates discovery. This, in a most wonderful way, reduces the mind's labour.
I hold that it is only when we can prove everything we assert that we understand perfectly the thing under consideration.
Nothing is more important than to see the sources of invention which are, in my opinion more interesting than the inventions themselves.
I have said more than once, that I hold space to be something purely relative, as time; an order of coexistences, as time is an order of successions.
Make me the the master of education, and I will undertake to change the world.
In symbols one observes an advantage in discovery which is greatest when they express the exact nature of a thing briefly and, as it were, picture it; then indeed the labor of thought is wonderfully diminished.
Whence it follows that God is absolutely perfect, since perfection is nothing but magnitude of positive reality, in the strict sense, setting aside the limits or bounds in things which are limited.
There is nothing without reason.
According to their [Newton and his followers] doctrine, God Almighty wants to wind up his watch from time to time: otherwise it would cease to move. He had not, it seems, sufficient foresight to make it a perpetual motion. Nay, the machine of God's making, so imperfect, according to these gentlemen; that he is obliged to clean it now and then by an extraordinary concourse, and even to mend it, as clockmaker mends his work.