“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.”

In reality, the past is preserved by itself automatically.

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.

When 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.

ACT as men of thought; THINK as men of action.

And I also see how this body influences external images: it gives back movement to them.

In 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.

The universe… is a machine for the making of gods.

Laughter is the corrective force which prevents us from becoming cranks.

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.

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.

Therefore, just as water retains no constant shape, so in warfare there are no constant conditions.

It is your decisions, and not your conditions, that determine your destiny.

Lack of activity destroys the good condition of every human being.

Most certainly, some planets are not inhabited, but others are, and among these there must exist life under all conditions and phases of development.

Doubt is an uncomfortable condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one.

Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.

The enemy is the necessary condition for practicing patience.

Real love means loving kindness and compassion, the kind of love that does not have any conditions.