Henri Bergson Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• There is nothing [that] disarms us like laughter.

  Henri Bergson

  Laughter

  12 Copy quote

• It seems that laughter needs an echo.

  Henri Bergson

  Happiness, Laughter, Philosophical

  9 Copy quote

• It is of man's essence to create materially and morally, to fabricate things and to fabricate himself. Homo faber is the definition I propose ... Homo faber, Homo sapiens, I pay my respects to both, for they tend to merge.

  Henri Bergson

  Men, Essence, Definitions

  Henri Bergson (2012). “The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics”, p.67, Courier Corporation

  16 Copy quote

• The vital spirit. L'élan vital

  Henri Bergson

  Spirit

  L'Evolution Creatrice ch. 2 (section title) (1907)

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• When we make the cerebral state the beginning of an action, and in no sense the condition of a perception, we place the perceived images of things outside the image of our body, and thus replace perception within the things themselves.

  Henri Bergson

  House, Perception, Body

  Henri Bergson (2012). “Matter and Memory”, p.150, Courier Corporation

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• The prestige of the Nobel Prize is due to many causes, but in particular to its twofold idealistic and international character: idealistic in that it has been designed for works of lofty inspiration; international in that it is awarded after the production of different countries has been minutely studied and the intellectual balance sheet of the whole world has been drawn up. Free from all other considerations and ignoring any but intellectual values, the judges have deliberately taken their place in what the philosophers have called a community of the mind.

  Henri Bergson

  Country, Taken, Inspiration

  Henri Bergson's acceptance speech (in the form of a letter) for the Nobel Prize in literature at the Nobel Banquet at Grand Hotel in Stockholm, www.nobelprize.org. December 10, 1928.

  5 Copy quote

• In short, intelligence, considered in what seems to be its original feature, is the faculty of manufacturing artificial objects, especially tools to make tools, and of indefinitely varying the manufacture.

  Henri Bergson

  Philosophical, Intelligence, Tools

  "Creative Evolution".

  16 Copy quote

• I see plainly how external images influence the image that I call my body : they transmit movement to it.

  Henri Bergson

  Philosophical, Movement, Body

  Henri Bergson (2002). “Henri Bergson: Key Writings”, p.87, A&C Black

  9 Copy quote

• You will obtain a vision of matter that is perhaps fatiguing for your imagination, but pure and stripped of what the requirements of life make you add to it in external perception.

  Henri Bergson

  Imagination, Vision, Perception

  9 Copy quote

• I cannot escape the objection that there is no state of mind, however simple, that does not change every moment

  Henri Bergson

  Philosophical, Simple, Mind

  Henri Bergson (1949). “An Introduction to Metaphysics”, p.40, Hackett Publishing

  10 Copy quote

• However spontaneous it seems, laughter always implies a kind of secret freemasonry, or even complicity, with other laughers, real or imaginary.

  Henri Bergson

  Laughter, Real, Secret

  Henri Bergson (2013). “Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic”, p.3, Courier Corporation

  5 Copy quote

• A situation is always comic if it participates simultaneously in two series of events which are absolutely independent of each other, and if it can be interpreted in two quite different meanings.

  Henri Bergson

  Independent, Two, Different

  Henri Bergson (2013). “Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic”, p.103, Courier Corporation

  18 Copy quote

• For life is tendency, and the essence of a tendency is to develop in the form of a sheaf, creating, by its very growth, divergent directions among which its impetus is divided.

  Henri Bergson

  Life, Essence, Creating

  Henri Bergson (2015). “Creative Evolution”, p.90, Sheba Blake Publishing

  8 Copy quote

• And I also see how this body influences external images: it gives back movement to them.

  Henri Bergson

  Philosophical, Giving, Movement

  Henri Bergson (2002). “Henri Bergson: Key Writings”, p.87, A&C Black

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• We regard intelligence as man's main characteristic and we know that there is no superiority which intelligence cannot confer on us, no inferiority for which it cannot compensate.

  Henri Bergson

  Men, Inferiority, Characteristics

  8 Copy quote

• Laughter is, above all, a corrective. Being intended to humiliate, it must make a painful impression on the person against whom it is directed. By laughter, society avenges itself for the liberties taken with it. It would fail in its object if it bore the stamp of sympathy or kindness.

  Henri Bergson

  Laughter, Kindness, Taken

  Henri Bergson (2014). “Key Writings”, p.478, Bloomsbury Publishing

  6 Copy quote

• Instinct perfected is a faculty of using and even constructing organized instruments; intelligence perfected is the faculty of making and using unorganized instruments.

  Henri Bergson

  Intuition, Natural Instinct, Faculty

  Henri Bergson (2014). “Creative Evolution”, p.139, Lulu Press, Inc

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• Laughter appears to stand in need of an echo, Listen to it carefully: it is not an articulate, clear, well-defined sound; it is something which would fain be prolonged by reverberating from one to another, something beginning with a crash, to continue in successive rumblings, like thunder in a mountain.

  Henri Bergson

  Laughter, Echoes, Mountain

  Henri Bergson (2013). “Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic”, p.3, Courier Corporation

  10 Copy quote

• Knowledge, in so far as it is directed to practical matters, has only to enumerate the principal possible attitudes of the thing towards us, as well as our best possible attitude towards it. Therein lies the ordinary function of ready-made concepts, those stations with which we mark out the path of becoming. But to seek to penetrate with them into the inmost nature of things, is to apply to the mobility of the real a method created in order to give stationary points of observation on it.

  Henri Bergson

  Nature, Real, Order

  "An Introduction to Metaphysics".

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• In short, intelligence, considered in what seems to be its original feature, is the faculty of manufacturing artificial objects, especially tools to make tools, and of indefinitely urging the manufacture.

  Henri Bergson

  Intelligence, Tools, Faculty

  "Creative Evolution" (1907) by Henri Bergson, as quoted in "Bergson, Complexity and Creative Emergence" by David Kreps, 2015.

  8 Copy quote

• Our laughter is always the laughter of a group.

  Henri Bergson

  Happiness, Laughter, Joy

  Henri Bergson (2013). “Comedy: An Essay on Comedy”, p.68, Doubleday

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• In laughter we always find an unavowed intention to humiliate and consequently to correct our neighbour.

  Henri Bergson

  Laughter, Intention, Neighbour

  Henri Bergson (2013). “Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic”, p.67, Courier Corporation

  61 Copy quote

• In just the same way the thousands of successive positions of a runner are contracted into one sole symbolic attitude, which our eye perceives, which art reproduces, and which becomes for everyone the image of a man who runs.

  Henri Bergson

  Running, Art, Attitude

  5 Copy quote

• When it is said that an object occupies a large space in the soul or even that it fills it entirely, we ought to understand by this simply that its image has altered the shade of a thousand perceptions or memories, and that in this sense it pervades them, although it does not itself come into view.

  Henri Bergson

  Memories, Views, Space

  Henri Bergson (2012). “Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness”, p.24, Courier Corporation

  5 Copy quote

• On the other hand, the pleasure caused by laughter, even on the stage, is not an unadulterated enjoyment; it is not a pleasure that is exclusively esthetic or altogether disinterested. It always implies a secret or unconscious intent, if not of each one of us, at all events of society as a whole. In laughter we always find an unavowed intention to humiliate, and consequently to correct our neighbour, if not in his will, at least in his deed.

  Henri Bergson

  Laughter, Hands, Secret

  Henri Bergson (2013). “Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic”, p.67, Courier Corporation

  9 Copy quote

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