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Why is there anything at all rather than nothing whatsoever?

Gottfried Leibniz

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Gottfried Leibniz
Age: 70 †
Born: 1646
Born: July 1
Died: 1716
Died: November 14
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Gottfried Wilhelm
Leibniz
Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz
Freiherr Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz
Gottfried Leibniz
Leibnitz
Whatsoever
Rather
Anything
Nothing

More quotes by Gottfried Leibniz

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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 Leibniz
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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 Leibniz
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The present is great with the future.
Gottfried Leibniz
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I hold that it is only when we can prove everything we assert that we understand perfectly the thing under consideration.
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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It is God who is the ultimate reason things, and the Knowledge of God is no less the beginning of science than his essence and will are the beginning of things.
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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There is a world of created beings - living things, animals, entelechies, and souls - in the least part of matter.... Thus there is nothing waste, nothing sterile, nothing dead in the universe no chaos, no confusions, save in appearance.
Gottfried Leibniz
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I am so in favor of the actual infinite that instead of admitting that Nature abhors it, as is commonly said, I hold that Nature makes frequent use of it everywhere, in order to show more effectively the perfections of its Author.
Gottfried Leibniz
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It is unworthy of excellent men to lose hours like slaves in the labor of calculation which could be relegated to anyone else if machines were used.
Gottfried Leibniz
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All things in God are spontaneous.
Gottfried Leibniz
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Music is nothing but unconscious arithmetic.
Gottfried Leibniz
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Therefore, I have attacted [the problem of the catenary] which I had hitherto not attempted, and with my key [the differential calculus] happily opened its secret. Acta eruditorum
Gottfried Leibniz
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There is nothing without reason.
Gottfried Leibniz
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Natural religion itself, seems to decay very much. Many will have human souls to be material: others make God himself a corporeal being.
Gottfried Leibniz
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But it is the knowledge of necessary and eternal truths which distinguishes us from mere animals, and gives us reason and the sciences, raising us to knowledge of ourselves and God. It is this in us which we call the rational soul or mind.
Gottfried Leibniz
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It's easier to be original and foolish than original and wise.
Gottfried Leibniz
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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 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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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