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

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

The emotion felt by a man in the presence of nature certainly counts for something in the origin of religions.

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.

The only reason to give a speech is to change the world.

The world is mere change, and this life, opinion.

In the moment when we are able to smile, to look at ourselves with compassion, our world begins to change.

I used to say, “I sure hope things will change.” Then I learned that the only way things are going to change for me is when I change.

Peace is a daily, a weekly, a monthly process, gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding old barriers, quietly building new structures.

I want the world to be better because I was here.

It’s only in times of change that someone can be clear of what he has and wants, and what he needs to give up.

It is better to change an opinion than to persist in a wrong one.