Henri Bergson

Philosopher

1859-10-18 – 1941-01-04

Henri Bergson was a French philosopher known for his work on duration, intuition, and creative evolution. Born in Paris on 1859-10-18, he became one of the most influential European thinkers of the early twentieth century and received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1927. He died in Paris on 1941-01-04.

Quotes by Henri Bergson

Long before being artists, we are artisans; and all fabrication, however rudimentary, lives on likeness and repetition, like the natural geometry which serves as its fulcrum. Fabrication works on models which it sets out to reproduce; and even when it invents, it proceeds, or imagines itself to proceed, by a new arrangement of elements already known. Its principle is that —we must have like to produce like.— In short, the strict application of the principle of finality, like that of the principle of mechanical causality, leads to the conclusion that —all is given.— Both principles say the same thing in their respective languages, because they respond to the same need.
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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.
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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.
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To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.
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The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory.
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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.
Read quote
Long before being artists, we are artisans; and all fabrication, however rudimentary, lives on likeness and repetition, like the natural geometry which serves as its fulcrum. Fabrication works on models which it sets out to reproduce; and even when it invents, it proceeds, or imagines itself to proceed, by a new arrangement of elements already known. Its principle is that —we must have like to produce like.— In short, the strict application of the principle of finality, like that of the principle of mechanical causality, leads to the conclusion that —all is given.— Both principles say the same thing in their respective languages, because they respond to the same need.
Read quote
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.
Read quote
The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory.
Read quote
To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I see plainly how external images influence the image that I call my body: they transmit movement to it.
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The major task of the twentieth century will be to explore the unconscious, to investigate the subsoil of the mind.
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Instinct perfected is a faculty of using and even constructing organized instruments; intelligence perfected is the faculty of making and using unorganized instruments.
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Intelligence is characterized by a natural incomprehension of life.
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Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.
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