# Quote — Neal Stephenson, Quicksilver

> Waterhouse: "Now, if you--the ingenious Dr. Leibniz--contrive a machine that gives the impression of thinking--is that really thinking, or merely reflecting your genius?"
>
> Leibniz: "You could as well have asked: are we thinking? Or merely reflecting God's genius?"
>
> Waterhouse: "If we are mere mechanisms, obeying rules laid down by God, then all of our actions are predestined, and we are not really thinking."
>
> Leibniz: "This is one of the two great labryrinths into which human minds are drawn: the question of free will versus predestination. You were raised to believe in the latter. You have rejected it--which must have been a great spiritual struggle--and become a thinker. You have adopted a modern, mechanical philosophy. But that philosophy now seems to be leading you back towards predestination."

- Author: [Neal Stephenson](https://www.leafyquotes.com/neal-stephenson.md)
- Book: [Quicksilver](https://www.leafyquotes.com/neal-stephenson/quicksilver.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Baroque_Cycle#Book_One:_Quicksilver) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/neal-stephenson/quicksilver/waterhouse-now-if-you-the

## More from this book

> "My father, Drake, educated me for one reason alone," Daniel finally says. "To assist him in his preparations for the Apocalypse. He reckoned it would occur in the year 1666—Number of the Beast and all that... When I came of age, I would be a man of the cloth, with the full university education, well versed in many dead classical languages, so that I could stand on the Cliffs of Dover and personally welcome Jesus Christ back to England in fluent Aramaic."

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/neal-stephenson/quicksilver/my-father-drake.md)

> "It is a symbol of Mercury--patron of commerce--who has been worshipped in this cellar--and in this city--for a thousand years, by Bishops as well as business-men. It is a cult that adapts itself to any religion, just as easily as quicksilver adapts itself to any container."

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/neal-stephenson/quicksilver/it-is-a-symbol.md)

> "I believe that binary arithemetickal engines will be of enormous significance"

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/neal-stephenson/quicksilver/i-believe-that.md)