“Genius is that which forces the inertia of humanity to learn.”

Is it astonishing that, like children trying to catch smoke by closing their hands, philosophers so often see the object they would grasp fly before them?

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

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

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

It seems that laughter needs an echo.

Our laughter is always the laughter of a group.

There is nothing in philosophy which could not be said in everyday language.

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

Religion is to mysticism what popularization is to science.

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.

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.

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.

There is nothing [that] disarms us like laughter.

One can always reason with reason.

Art has no other object than to set aside the symbols of practical utility, the generalities that are conventionally and socially accepted, everything in fact which masks reality from us, in order to set us face to face with reality itself.

We are free when our actions emanate from our total personality, when they express it, when they resemble it in the indefinable way a work of art sometimes does the artist.

If you have inner peace, nobody can force you to be a slave to the outer reality.

The job of the poet (a job which can’t be learned) consists of placing those objects of the visible world which have become invisible due to the glue of habit, in an unusual position which strikes the soul and gives them a tragic force.

Women speaking up for themselves and for those around them is the strongest force we have to change the world.

I saw that all beings are fated to happiness: action is not life, but a way of wasting some force, an enervation. Morality is the weakness of the brain.

Globalisation is not something that we can hold off or turn off. It is the economic equivalent of a force of nature, like wind or water.

There must be a law against forcing children to perform at an early age. Children should have a wonderful childhood. They should not be given too much responsibility.

It’s amazing the gymnastics you can do when you don’t want to do something. How you can force yourself against all the forces of nature. I threw myself backward.

I was born with scoliosis. I have a double curvature of the spine, and it’s forced me to use a wheelchair because the disease has really taken hold. It really saddens me that I can’t ride.