Henri Bergson
Henri Bergson
Henri-Louis Bergsonwas a major French philosopher, influential especially in the first half of the 20th century. Bergson convinced many thinkers that the processes of immediate experience and intuition are more significant than abstract rationalism and science for understanding reality...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth18 October 1859
CountryFrance
laughter hands secret
On the other hand, the pleasure caused by laughter, even on the stage, is not an unadulterated enjoyment; it is not a pleasure that is exclusively esthetic or altogether disinterested. It always implies a secret or unconscious intent, if not of each one of us, at all events of society as a whole. In laughter we always find an unavowed intention to humiliate, and consequently to correct our neighbour, if not in his will, at least in his deed.
reason mathematician
One can always reason with reason.
rivers movement bed
The movement of the stream is distinct from the river bed, although it must adopt its winding course.
army animal men
All the living hold together, and all yield to the same tremendous push. The animal takes its stand on the plant, man bestrides animality, and the whole of humanity, in space and in time, is one immense army galloping beside and before and behind each of us in an overwhelming charge able to beat down every resistance and clear the most formidable obstacles, perhaps even death.
nature men emotion
The emotion felt by a man in the presence of nature certainly counts for something in the origin of religions.
perception movement matter
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.
philosophical body movement
I see plainly how external images influence the image that I call my body : they transmit movement to it.
philosophical mind tasks
The major task of the twentieth century will be to explore the unconscious, to investigate the subsoil of the mind.
humanity genius force
Genius is that which forces the inertia of humanity to learn.
laughter intention neighbour
In laughter we always find an unavowed intention to humiliate and consequently to correct our neighbour.
nature real order
Thus to seek with ready-made concepts to penetrate into the inmost nature of things is to apply to the mobility of the real a method created in order to give stationary points of observation on it. . . .
machines universe
The universe is a machine for the making of Gods.
act means perceive perception
To perceive means to immobilize. We seize, in the act of perception, something which outruns perception itself.
call external french-scientist images transmit
I see plainly how external images influence the image that I call my body: they transmit movement to it.