Henri Bergson quotes - page 2

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. (Henri Bergson)
It seems that laughter needs an echo. View quote
Henri Bergson
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. View quote
Henri Bergson
You will obtain a vision of matter that is perhaps fatiguing for your imagination, but pure and stripped of what the requirements of life make you add to it in external perception. View quote
Henri Bergson
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. View quote
Henri Bergson
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. View quote
Henri Bergson
Instinct perfected is a faculty of using and even constructing organized instruments; intelligence perfected is the faculty of making and using unorganized instruments. View quote
Henri Bergson
And I also see how this body influences external images: it gives back movement to them. View quote
Henri Bergson
In laughter we always find an unavowed intention to humiliate and consequently to correct our neighbour. View quote
Henri Bergson
Our laughter is always the laughter of a group. View quote
Henri Bergson
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. (Henri Bergson)
The eyes see only what the mind is prepared to comprehend. View quote
Henri Bergson
The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory. View quote
Henri Bergson
The open society is one that is deemed in principle to embrace all humanity. View quote
Henri Bergson
To perceive means to immobilize... we seize, in the act of perception, something which outruns perception itself. View quote
Henri Bergson
A philosopher worthy of the name has never said more than a single thing: and even then it is something he has tried to say, rather than actually said. And he has said only one thing because he has seen only one point: and at that it was not so much a vision as a contact... View quote
Henri Bergson
I see plainly how external images influence the image that I call my body: they transmit movement to it. View quote
Henri Bergson
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. View quote
Henri Bergson
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. View quote
Henri Bergson
His intelligence and his imagination will use the teachings of the theologians to express in words what he experiences, and in material images what he sees spiritually. View quote
Henri Bergson
Men do not sufficiently realise that their future is in their own hands. (Henri Bergson)
This explains the primary mission which he feels to be entrusted to him, that of an intensifier of religious faith. View quote
Henri Bergson
Intelligence is the faculty of making artificial objects, especially tools to make tools. View quote
Henri Bergson
In its entirety, probably, it follows us at every instant; all that we have felt, thought and willed from our earliest infancy is there, leaning over the present which is about to join it, pressing against the portals of consciousness that would fain leave it outside. View quote
Henri Bergson