...as far as we are capable of knowledge we sin in neglecting to acquire it...
— New Essays on Human Understanding
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat. Alongside Isaac Newton, he is widely credited with the invention of calculus, and he made foundational contributions to binary arithmetic and statistics.
He has been called the "last universal genius" for his expertise across fields, which became rare after his lifetime. He wrote on philosophy, theology, ethics, politics, law, history, philology, music and economics, made major contributions to physics and technology, and anticipated ideas that surfaced much later in probability theory, biology, psychology, linguistics and computer science. He is a prominent figure in both the history of philosophy and the history of mathematics. New Essays on Human Understanding and the Monadology are his most quoted works in our library.
He has been called the "last universal genius" for his expertise across fields, which became rare after his lifetime. He wrote on philosophy, theology, ethics, politics, law, history, philology, music and economics, made major contributions to physics and technology, and anticipated ideas that surfaced much later in probability theory, biology, psychology, linguistics and computer science. He is a prominent figure in both the history of philosophy and the history of mathematics. New Essays on Human Understanding and the Monadology are his most quoted works in our library.
Most quoted works
- New Essays on Human Understanding 6
- Monadology 2
For all bodies are in perpetual flux like rivers, and parts are passing in and out of them continually.
— Monadology
…every feeling is the perception of a truth...
— New Essays on Human Understanding
The mind is not only capable of knowing [innate ideas], but further of finding them in itself; and if it had only the simple capacity to receive knowledge…it would not be the source of necessary truths…
— New Essays on Human Understanding
For the [innate] general principles enter into our thoughts, of which they form the soul and the connection. They are as necessary thereto as the muscles and sinews are for walking, although we do not at all think of them.
— New Essays on Human Understanding
…if geometry were as much opposed to our passions and present interests as is ethics, we should contest it and violate I but little less, notwithstanding all the demonstrations of Euclid and Archimedes…
— New Essays on Human Understanding
Nothing is necessitated whose opposite is possible.
— Discourse on Metaphysics and Other Essays
The mind leans on [innate] principles every moment, but it does not come so easily to distinguish them and to represent them distinctly and separately, because that demands great attention to its acts, and the majority of people, little accustomed to think, has little of it.
— New Essays on Human Understanding
Nihil est sine ratione.[There is nothing without a reason.]
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.