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 LeibnizImaginary numbers are a fine and wonderful refuge of the divine spirit almost an amphibian between being and non-being.
Gottfried LeibnizIt is a good thing to proceed in order and to establish propositions. This is the way to gain ground and to progress with certainty.
Gottfried LeibnizAccording to their [Newton and his followers] doctrine, God Almighty wants to wind up his watch from time to time: otherwise it would cease to move. He had not, it seems, sufficient foresight to make it a perpetual motion. Nay, the machine of God's making, so imperfect, according to these gentlemen; that he is obliged to clean it now and then by an extraordinary concourse, and even to mend it, as clockmaker mends his work.
Gottfried Leibniz