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 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.
More Henri Bergson Quotes
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Intelligence is characterized by a natural incomprehension of life.
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One can always reason with reason.
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A 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.
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Religion is to mysticism what popularization is to science.
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The major task of the twentieth century will be to explore the unconscious, to investigate the subsoil of the mind.
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In laughter we always find an unavowed intention to humiliate and consequently to correct our neighbour.
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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.
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The emotion felt by a man in the presence of nature certainly counts for something in the origin of religions.
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And I also see how this body influences external images: it gives back movement to them.
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For life is tendency, and the essence of a tendency is to develop in the form of a sheaf, creating, by its very growth, divergent directions among which its impetus is divided.
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Some other faculty than the intellect is necessary for the apprehension of reality.
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There is no greater joy than that of feeling oneself a creator. The triumph of life is expressed by creation.
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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.
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Wherever anything lives, there is, open somewhere, a register in which time is being inscribed.
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Divine love is not something belonging to God: it is God Himself.
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Laughter is the corrective force which prevents us from becoming cranks.
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There is nothing in philosophy which could not be said in everyday language.
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Instinct perfected is a faculty of using and even constructing organized instruments; intelligence perfected is the faculty of making and using unorganized instruments.
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The universe… is a machine for the making of gods.
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I cannot escape the objection that there is no state of mind, however simple, that does not change every moment.
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It seems that laughter needs an echo.
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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.
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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 -
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.
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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 urging the manufacture.
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Our laughter is always the laughter of a group.
HENRI BERGSON