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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
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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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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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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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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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Reality cannot be found except in One single source, because of the interconnection of all things with one another. I maintain also that substances, whether material or immaterial, cannot be conceived in their bare essence without any activity, activity being of the essence of substance in general.
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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God makes nothing without order, and everything that forms itself develops imperceptibly out of small parts.
Gottfried Leibniz
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For since it is impossible for a created monad to have a physical influence on the inner nature of another, this is the only way in which one can be dependent on another.
Gottfried Leibniz
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Nothing is more important than to see the sources of invention which are, in my opinion more interesting than the inventions themselves.
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 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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To love is to place happiness in the heart of another.
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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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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The words 'Here you can find perfect peace' can be written only over the gates of a cemetery.
Gottfried Leibniz
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The past is pregnant with the present.
Gottfried Leibniz
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Make me the the master of education, and I will undertake to change the world.
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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The art of discovering the causes of phenomena, or true hypotheses, is like the art of deciphering, in which an ingenious conjecture often greatly shortens the road.
Gottfried Leibniz