Henri Bergson Quotes

To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.

— Henri Bergson

“The idea of the future, pregnant with an infinity of possibilities, is thus more fruitful than the future itself, and this is why we find more charm in hope than in possession, in dreams than in reality.”

— Henri Bergson

The universe is a machine for the making of Gods.

— Henri Bergson

“But, then, I cannot escape the objection that there is no state of mind, however simple, which does not change every moment, since there is no consciousness without memory, and no continuation of a state without the addition, to the present feeling, of the memory of past moments. It is this which constitutes duration. Inner duration is the continuous life of a memory which prolongs the past into the present, the present either containing within it in a distinct form the ceaselessly growing image of the past, or, more profoundly, showing by its continual change of quality the heavier and still heavier load we drag behind us as we grow older. Without this survival of the past into the present there would be no duration, but only instantaneity.”

— Henri Bergson

“Men do not sufficiently realize
that their future is in their own hands.
Theirs is the task of determining first of all whether they want to go on living or not.
Theirs is the responsibility, then, for deciding if they want merely to live,
or intend to make just the extra effort required
for fulfilling, even on this refractory planet,
the essential function of the universe,
which is a machine for the making of gods.”

— Henri Bergson

“Europe is overpopulated, the world will soon be in the same condition, and if the self-reproduction of man is not rationalized ... we shall have war.”

— Henri Bergson

Time is invention and nothing else.

— Henri Bergson

“There are manifold tones of mental life, or, in other words, our psychic life may be lived at different heights, now nearer to action, now further removed from it, according to the degree of our attention to life.”

— Henri Bergson

“Laughter is the corrective force which prevents us from becoming cranks.”

— Henri Bergson

That diversion of life towards mechanism is the real cause of laughter

— Henri Bergson

“The question is precisely to know whether the past has ceased to exist, or ceased to be useful ...”

— Henri Bergson

No two moments are identical in a conscious being

— Henri Bergson

“Creation signifies, above all, emotion, and that not in literature or art alone. We all know the concentration and effort implied in scientific discovery. Genius has been defined as an infinite capacity for taking pains.”

— Henri Bergson

“Psychical life is neither unity nor multiplicity, that it transcends both the mechanical and the intellectual, mechanism and finalism having meaning only where there is "distinct multiplicity," "spatiality," and consequently assemblage of pre-existing parts: "real duration" signifies both undivided continuity and creation.”

— Henri Bergson

“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

“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

“Homo sapiens, the only creature endowed with reason, is also the only creature to pin its existence on things unreasonable.”

— Henri Bergson

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

“An absolute can only be given in an intuition, while all the rest has to do with analysis.”

— Henri Bergson

“Wherever anything lives, there is, open somewhere, a register in which time is being inscribed.”

— Henri Bergson

“Some other faculty than the intellect is necessary for the apprehension of reality.”

— Henri Bergson

“Life does not proceed by the association and addition of elements, but by dissociation and division.”

— Henri Bergson

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

— Henri Bergson

“The only cure for vanity is laughter, and the only fault that is laughable is vanity.”

— Henri Bergson

“Intelligence is the faculty of making artificial objects, especially tools to make tools.”

— Henri Bergson

Spirit borrows from matter the perceptions on which it feeds and restores them to matter in the form of movements which it has stamped with its own freedom.

— Henri Bergson

Sex appeal is the keynote of our civilization.

— Henri Bergson

“It seems that laughter needs an echo.”

— Henri Bergson

“The motive power of democracy is love.”

— Henri Bergson

“There is no greater joy than that of feeling oneself a creator. The triumph of life is expressed by creation.”

— Henri Bergson

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

— Henri Bergson

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

— Henri Bergson

“If reality impacted directly on our senses and our consciousness, if we could have direct communication between the material world and ourselves, art would be unnecessary.”

— Henri Bergson

“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

“Only those ideas that are least truly ours can be adequately expressed in words.”

— Henri Bergson

There is nothing [that] disarms us like laughter.

— Henri Bergson

“It is emotion that drives the intelligence forward in spite of obstacles.”

— Henri Bergson

“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

“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

“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

“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

The movement of the stream is distinct from the river bed, although it must adopt its winding course.

— Henri Bergson

To drive out the darkness, bring in the light.

— Henri Bergson

“I believe I experience creativity at every moment of my life.”

— Henri Bergson

It is the very essence of intelligence to coordinate means with a view to a remote end, and to undertake what it does not feel absolutely sure of carrying out.

— Henri Bergson

“All the living hold together, and all yield to the same tremendous push. The animal takes its stand on the plant, man bestrides animality, and the whole of humanity, in space and in time, is one immense army galloping beside and before and behind each of us in an overwhelming charge able to beat down every resistance and clear the most formidable obstacles, perhaps even death.”

— Henri Bergson

Divine love is not something belonging to God: it is God Himself.

— Henri Bergson

“Action on the move creates its own route, creates to a very great extent the conditions under which it is to be fulfilled and thus baffles all calculation.”

— Henri Bergson

“Thus to seek with ready-made concepts to penetrate 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

“I believe that the time given to refutation in philosophy is usually time lost. Of the many attacks directed by many thinkers against each other, what now remains? Nothing, or assuredly very little. That which counts and endures is the modicum of positive truth which each contributes. The true statement is, of itself, able to displace the erroneous idea, and becomes, without our having taken the trouble of refuting anyone, the best of refutations.”

— Henri Bergson