He occupies a grand place in both the history of philosophy and the history of mathematics. He invented infinitesimal calculus independently of Newton, and his notation has been in general use since then. He also invented the binary system, the foundation of virtually all modern computer architectures. In philosophy, he is mostly remembered for optimism, e.g., his conclusion that our universe is, in a restricted sense, the best possible one God could have made. He was, along with René Descartes and Baruch Spinoza, one of the three great 17th-century rationalists and his work anticipates modern logic and analysis, but his philosophy also looks back to the scholastic tradition, in which conclusions are produced by applying reason to first principles or a priori definitions rather than to empirical evidence.

1. Finally there are simple ideas of which no definition can be given; there are also axioms or postulates, or in a word primary principles, which cannot be proved and have no need of proof.

2. I also take it as granted that every created thing, and consequently the created monad also, is subject to change, and indeed that this change is continual in each one.

1. And it came to me, and I knew what I had to have before my soul would rest. I wanted to belong – to belong to my mother. And in return – I wanted my mother to belong to me.

2. . . . one of the goals of life is to try and be in touch with one’s most personal themes — the values, ideas, styles, colors that are the touchstones of one’s own individual life, its real texture and substance.

3. The fame you earn has a different taste from the fame that is forced upon you.

4. I’ve always believed that one woman’s success can only help another woman’s success.

Sayings by George Jean Nathan

1. A man admires a woman not for what she says, but what she listens to.

2. Criticism is the art of appraising others at one’s own value.

3. No man can think clearly when his fists are clenched.

4. I only drink to make other people seem interesting.

5. What passes for woman’s intuition is often nothing more than man’s transparency.

6. To speak of morals in art is to speak of legislature in sex. Art is the sex of the imagination.

7. The test of a real comedian is whether you laugh at him before he opens his mouth.

8. Women, as they grow older, rely more and more on cosmetics. Men, as they grow older, rely more and more on a sense of humor.

She used a male pen name, she said, to ensure that her works were taken seriously. Female authors published freely under their own names, but Eliot wanted to ensure that she was not seen as merely a writer of romances. An additional factor may have been a desire to shield her private life from public scrutiny and to prevent scandals attending her relationship with the married George Henry Lewes.

Zukav had dealt with anger problems for much of his life, and he was a sex addict. He began writing and teaching after discovering spirituality. His work includes instruction on creating “authentic power” and becoming emotionally aware.

Zukav is a recurring guest on the Oprah Winfrey Show, having made regular appearances during the mid-to-late 1990s and returning in 2007. His most recent appearance discussed how to create a spiritual partnership.

1. Reality is what we take to be true. What we take to be true is what we believe. What we believe is based upon our perceptions. What we perceive depends upon what we look for. What we look for depends upon what we think. What we think depends upon what we perceive. What we perceive determines what we believe. What we believe determines what we take to be true. what we take to be true is our reality.

2. When you interact with another, an illusion is part of this dynamic. This illusion allows each soul to perceive what it needs to understands in order to heal.

3. The first man to see an illusion by which men have flourished for centuries surely stands in a lonely place.

4. The higher order of logic and understanding that is capable of meaningfully reflecting the soul comes from the heart.

5. Acceptance without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western religion, Rejection without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western science.

1. It’s not the situation that’s causing your stress, it’s your thoughts, and you can change that right here and now. You can choose to be peaceful right here and now. Peace is a choice, and it has nothing to do with what other people do or think.

2. A truly creative person rids him or herself of all self-imposed limitations.

3. Forgiveness means letting go of the past.

4. I can have peace of mind only when I forgive rather than judge.

5. When I am able to resist the temptation to judge others, I can see them as teachers of forgiveness in my life, reminding me that I can only have peace of mind when I forgive rather than judge.

6. Inner peace can be reached only when we practice forgiveness. Forgiveness is letting go of the past, and is therefore the means for correcting our misperceptions.

7. Other people do not have to change for us to experience peace of mind.

8. Peace of mind comes from not wanting to change others.

9. Through our willingness to help others we can learn to be happy rather than depressed.

10. You can be right or you can be happy.

1. Reality can destroy the dream; why shouldn’t the dream destroy reality?

2. A man travels the world in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.

3. The difficulty in life is the choice.

4. A very slight change in our habits is sufficient to destroy our sense of our daily reality, and the reality of the world about us; the moment we pass out of our habits we lose all sense of permanency and routine.

5. It does not matter how badly you paint so long as you don’t paint badly like other people.

6. After all, there is but one race: humanity.

7. Remorse: beholding heaven and feeling hell.

8. The mind petrifies if a circle be drawn around it, and it can hardly be that dogma draws a circle round the mind.

9. The wrong way always seems the more reasonable.

10. No man, however great, is known to everybody and no man, however solitary, is known to nobody.

11. The lot of critics is to be remembered by what they failed to understand.

12. There is nothing so consoling as to find one’s neighbor’s troubles are at least as great as one’s own.

13. It’s going to take years before we can get into a good routine of growing timber at the rate we are harvesting timber.

1. Guard well within yourself that treasure, kindness. Know how to give without hesitation, how to lose without regret, how to acquire without meanness.

2. Life resembles a novel more often than novels resemble life.

3. No human creature can give orders to love.

4. No one makes a revolution by himself; and there are some revolutions which humanity accomplishes without quite knowing how, because it is everybody who takes them in hand.

5. One changes from day to day, and… after a few years have passed one has completely altered.

6. Simplicity is the most difficult thing to secure in this world; it is the last limit of experience and the last effort of genius.

7. The beauty that addresses itself to the eyes is only the spell of the moment; the eye of the body is not always that of the soul.

8. Try to keep your soul young and quivering right up to old age, and to imagine right up to the brink of death that life is only beginning. I think that is the only way to keep adding to one’s talent, and one’s inner happiness.

9. Work is not man’s punishment. It is his reward and his strength and his pleasure.

10. One is happy as a result of one’s own efforts once one knows the necessary ingredients of happiness simple tastes, a certain degree of courage, self denial to a point, love of work, and above all, a clear conscience.

11. You can bind my body, tie my hands, govern my actions: you are the strongest, and society adds to your power; but with my will, sir, you can do nothing.

12. If they are ignorant, they are despised, if learned, mocked. In love they are reduced to the status of courtesans. As wives they are treated more as servants than as companions. Men do not love them: they make use of them, they exploit them, and expect, in that way, to make them subject to the law of fidelity.

13. Let us accept truth, even when it surprises us and alters our views.

14. The old woman I shall become will be quite different from the woman I am now. Another I is beginning.

15. It is a mistake to regard age as a downhill grade toward dissolution. The
reverse is true. As one grows older, one climbs with surprising strides.

16. The world will know and understand me someday. But if that day does not arrive, it does not greatly matter. I shall have opened the way for other women.

1. Be quick to learn and wise to know.

2. Don’t stay in bed, unless you can make money in bed.

3. Everything that goes up must come down. But there comes a time when not everything that’s down can come up.

4. How beautifully leaves grow old. How full of light and color are their last days.

5. I would go out with women my age, but there are no women my age.

6. I’m very pleased to be here. Let’s face it, at my age I’m very pleased to be anywhere.

7. If you ask what is the single most important key to longevity, I would have to say it is avoiding worry, stress and tension. And if you didn’t ask me, I’d still have to say it.

8. It takes only one drink to get me drunk. The trouble is, I can’t remember if it’s the thirteenth or the fourteenth.

9. Retirement at sixty-five is ridiculous. When I was sixty-five I still had pimples.

10. Sex at age 90 is like trying to shoot pool with a rope.

11. Too bad all the people who know how to run this country are busy running taxicabs or cutting hair.

12. You know you’re getting old when you stoop to tie your shoelaces and wonder what else you could do while you’re down there.

13. Acting is all about honesty. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.