Henri Bergson Quotes

"Mais, si le souvenir n'a pas été emmagasiné par le cerveau, où donc se conserve-t-il ? - A vrai dire, je ne suis pas sûr que la question "où" ait encore un sens quand on ne parle plus d'un corps."

[...] le cerveau ne détermine pas la pensée ; et par conséquent la pensée, en grande partie du moins, est indépendante du cerveau.

De diez errores políticos, nueve consisten simplemente en creer todavía verdadero lo que ha cesado de serlo.

To sum up, whatever be the doctrine to which our reason assents, our imagination has a very clear-cut philosophy of its own: in every human form it sees the effort of a soul which is shaping matter, a soul which is infinitely supple and perpetually in motion, subject to no law of gravitation, for it is not the earth that attracts it. This soul imparts a portion of its winged lightness to the body it animates: the immateriality which thus passes into matter is what is called gracefulness. Matter, however, is obstinate and resists.

Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.

Underlying the doctrines which disregard the radical novelty of each moment of evolution there are many misunderstandings, many errors. But there is especially the idea that the possible is less than the real, and that, for this reason, the possibility of things precedes their existence. They would thus be capable of representation beforehand; they could be thought of before being realised. But it is the reverse that is true. If we leave aside the closed systems, subjected to purely mathematical laws, isolable because duration does not act upon them, if we consider the totality of concrete reality or simply the world of life, and still more that of consciousness, we find there is more and not less in the possibility of each of the successive states than in their reality. For the possible is only the real with the addition of an act of mind which throws its image back into the past, once it has been enacted. But that is what our intellectual habits prevent us from seeing.

Sex-appeal is the keynote of our whole civilization.

The theory of knowledge is inseparable from the theory of life. They must unite so that each may move the other forward.

Well, what nature does from time to time, by distraction, for certain privileged individuals, could not philosophy on such a matter attempt, in another sense and another way, for everyone? Would not the role of philosophy under such circumstances be to lead us to a completer perception of reality by means of a certain displacement of our attention? It would be a question of turning this attention aside from the part of the universe which interests us from a practical viewpoint and turning it back toward what serves no practical purpose. This conversion of the attention would be philosophy itself. At first glance it would seem that this has long since been done. More than one philosopher has in fact said that in order to philosophize he had to be detached, and that speculation was the reverse of action. We were speaking a few moments ago of the Greek philosophers: not one of them expressed the idea more forcefully than Plotinus. “All action,” he said (and he even added “all fabrication”) “weakens contemplation.

There is no pool, however, which has not some dead leaves floating on its surface, no human soul upon which there do not settle habits that make it rigid against itself by making it rigid against others.

Darwin’s theory of evolution pointed to the conclusion that flux (or becoming), not being, is the essence of reality.

Avouons notre ignorance, mais ne nous résignons pas à la croire définitive.

Pour un être conscient, exister consiste à changer, changer à se mûrir, se mûrir à se créer indéfiniment soi-même.

No aprehendemos de nuestros sentimientos más que su aspecto impersonal, aquel que el lenguaje ha podido clasificar de una vez por todas porque. más o menos, en las mismas condiciones es el mismo para todos los hombres. Así, hasta en nuestro propio individuo la individualidad se nos escapa.

"Certo filósofo contemporâneo, emérito argumentador, a quem se observou que os seus raciocínios irrepreensivelmente deduzidos eram contrariados pela experiência, encerrou a discussão com esta singela observação: "A experiência está errada." A idéia de regulamentar administrativamente a vida é mais difundida do que se pensa; é natural a seu modo, embora acabemos de obtê-la mediante um processo de recomposição. Poderíamos dizer que ela nos oferece a própria quintessência do pedantismo, o qual não passa, no fundo, da arte pretendendo superpor-se à natureza."