When a truth is necessary, the reason for it can be found by analysis, that is, by resolving it into simpler ideas and truths until the primary ones are reached. It is this way that in mathematics speculative theorems and… — Gottfried Leibniz Copy Share Image
Finally there are simple ideas of which no definition can be given; there are also axioms or postulates, or in a word primary principles, which cannot be proved and have no need of proof. — Gottfried Leibniz Copy Share Image
There are two famous labyrinths where our reason very often goes astray. One concerns the great question of the free and the necessary, above… — Gottfried Leibniz Copy Share
Either there are no corporeal substances, and bodies are merely phenomena which are true or consistent with each other, such as a rainbow or… — Gottfried Leibniz Copy Share
Make me the the master of education, and I will undertake to change the world. — Gottfried Leibniz Copy Share
All the different classes of beings which taken together make up the universe are, in the ideas of God who knows distinctly their essential… — Gottfried Leibniz Copy Share
I hold that the mark of a genuine idea is that its possibility can be proved, either a priori by conceiving its cause or… — Gottfried Leibniz Copy Share
The monad, of which we shall speak here, is nothing but a simple substance which enters into compounds; simple, that is to say, without… — Gottfried Leibniz Copy Share
There is no way in which a simple substance could begin in the course of nature, since it cannot be formed by means of… — Gottfried Leibniz Copy Share
In symbols one observes an advantage in discovery which is greatest when they express the exact nature of a thing briefly and, as it… — Gottfried Leibniz Copy Share
God, possessing supreme and infinite wisdom, acts in the most perfect manner, not only metaphysically, but also morally speaking, and ... with respect to… — Gottfried Leibniz Copy Share
It can have its effect only through the intervention of God, inasmuch as in the ideas of God a monad rightly demands that God,… — Gottfried Leibniz Copy Share
The pleasure we obtain from music comes from counting, but counting unconsciously. Music is nothing but unconscious arithmetic. — Gottfried Leibniz Copy Share
If we were magically shrunk and put into someone's brain while she was thinking, we would see all the pumps, pistons, gears and levers… — Gottfried Leibniz Copy Share