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?
HENRI BERGSONIs 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?
HENRI BERGSONIntelligence is characterized by a natural incomprehension of life.
HENRI BERGSONIt is emotion that drives the intelligence forward in spite of obstacles.
HENRI BERGSONWhen 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 BERGSONWhen 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 BERGSONHowever spontaneous it seems, laughter always implies a kind of secret freemasonry, or even complicity, with other laughers, real or imaginary.
HENRI BERGSONIt 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 BERGSONEurope 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 BERGSONAn absolute can only be given in an intuition, while all the rest has to do with analysis.
HENRI BERGSONSome other faculty than the intellect is necessary for the apprehension of reality.
HENRI BERGSONThe movement of the stream is distinct from the river bed, although it must adopt its winding course.
HENRI BERGSONOnly those ideas that are least truly ours can be adequately expressed in words.
HENRI BERGSONA situation is always comic if it participates simultaneously in two series of events which are absolutely independent of each other, and if it can be interpreted in two quite different meanings.
HENRI BERGSONLaughter 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 BERGSONIn 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 varying the manufacture.
HENRI BERGSONGenius is that which forces the inertia of humanity to learn.
HENRI BERGSON