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To perceive means to immobilize. To say this is to say that we seize, in the act of perception, something which outruns perception itself.

Henri Bergson

Intelligence is characterized by a natural incomprehension of life.
HENRI BERGSON

Character Intelligence Life Natural
It is emotion that drives the intelligence forward in spite of obstacles.
HENRI BERGSON

Drive Emotion Forward Obstacle
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

Boredom Director Humiliate Impression Kindness Laughter Object Pain Society Sympathy
The major task of the twentieth century will be to explore the unconscious, to investigate the subsoil of the mind.
HENRI BERGSON

Conscious Exploration Mindset Task Work
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

Art Attitude Eyes Image Ourselves Reproduction Run Success
There is nothing [that] disarms us like laughter.
HENRI BERGSON

Guard Laughter Ourselves
However spontaneous it seems, laughter always implies a kind of secret freemasonry, or even complicity, with other laughers, real or imaginary.
HENRI BERGSON

Complication Imagination Kind Laughter Reality
In laughter we always find an unavowed intention to humiliate and consequently to correct our neighbour.
HENRI BERGSON

Correct Humiliate Intention Laughter Neighbor Ourselves
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.
HENRI BERGSON

Image Memories Object Perception Soul Space Understand
The movement of the stream is distinct from the river bed, although it must adopt its winding course.
HENRI BERGSON

Movement River Source Stream Wind
The universe… is a machine for the making of gods.
HENRI BERGSON

God Machine Universe
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

Construction Faculty Instrument Intelligence Organization Perfection
Life does not proceed by the association and addition of elements, but by dissociation and division.
HENRI BERGSON

Association Division Element Life Process
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

Attention Different Life Man Mental Ourselves Remove Tone
One can always reason with reason.
HENRI BERGSON

Oneself Reason
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

Carry Essence Feeling Intelligence View

To perceive means to immobilize. To say this is to say that we seize, in the act of perception, something which outruns perception itself.

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To perceive means to immobilize. To say this is to say that we seize, in the act of perception, something which outruns perception itself.

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Popular Authors

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