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The dot was introduced as a symbol for multiplication by Leibniz. On July 29, 1698, he wrote in a letter to Johann Bernoulli: I do not like X as a symbol for multiplication, as it is easily confounded with x.

Gottfried Leibniz

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Gottfried Leibniz
Age: 70 †
Born: 1646
Born: July 1
Died: 1716
Died: November 14
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More quotes by Gottfried Leibniz

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Indeed every monad must be different from every other. For there are never in nature two beings, which are precisely alike, and in which it is not possible to find some difference which is internal, or based on some intrinsic quality.
Gottfried Leibniz
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For things remain possible, even if God does not choose them. Indeed, even if God does not will something to exist, it is possible for it to exist, since, by its nature, it could exist if God were to will it to exist.
Gottfried Leibniz
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One cannot explain words without making incursions into the sciences themselves, as is evident from dictionaries and, conversely, one cannot present a science without at the same time defining its terms.
Gottfried Leibniz
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Music is nothing but unconscious arithmetic.
Gottfried Leibniz
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Now where there are no parts, there neither extension, nor shape, nor divisibility is possible. And these monads are the true atoms of nature and, in a word, the elements of things.
Gottfried Leibniz
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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 Leibniz
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Our reasonings are grounded upon two great principles, that of contradiction, in virtue of which we judge false that which involves a contradiction, and true that which is opposed or contradictory to the false.
Gottfried Leibniz
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Nothing is accomplished all at once, and it is one of my great maxims, and one of the most completely verified, that Nature makes no leaps: a maxim which I have called the law of continuity.
Gottfried Leibniz
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There never is absolute birth nor complete death, in the strict sense, consisting in the separation of the soul from the body. What we call births are developments and growths, while what we call deaths are envelopments and diminutions.
Gottfried Leibniz
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Philosophy consists mostly of kicking up a lot of dust and then complaining that you can't see anything.
Gottfried Leibniz
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Indeed in general I hold that there is nothing truer than happiness, and nothing happier and sweeter than truth.
Gottfried Leibniz
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I have seen something of the project of M. de St. Pierre, for maintaining a perpetual peace in Europe. I am reminded of a device in a cemetery, with the words: Pax perpetua for the dead do not fight any longer: but the living are of another humor and the most powerful do not respect tribunals at all.
Gottfried Leibniz
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Either there are no corporeal substances, and bodies are merely phenomena which are true or consistent with each other, such as a rainbow or a perfectly coherent dream, or there is in all corporeal substances something analogous to the soul.
Gottfried Leibniz
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He who understands Archimedes and Apollonius will admire less the achievements of the foremost men of later times.
Gottfried Leibniz
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The world is not a machine. Everything in it is force, life, thought.
Gottfried Leibniz
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I am convinced that the unwritten knowledge scattered among men of different callings surpasses in quantity and in importance anything we find in books, and that the greater part of our wealth has yet to be recorded.
Gottfried Leibniz
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The words 'Here you can find perfect peace' can be written only over the gates of a cemetery.
Gottfried Leibniz
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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.
Gottfried Leibniz
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...a distinction must be made between true and false ideas, and that too much rein must not be given to a man's imagination under pretext of its being a clear and distinct intellection.
Gottfried Leibniz
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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.
Gottfried Leibniz