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
obstacles emotion spite
It is emotion that drives the intelligence forward in spite of obstacles.
art work personality
We are free when our actions emanate from our total personality, when they express it, when they resemble it in the indefinable way a work of art sometimes does the artist.
philosophical democracy motive
The motive power of democracy is love
laughter
There is nothing [that] disarms us like laughter.
moving action habit
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.
independent two different
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.
reason mathematician
One can always reason with reason.
ideas
Only those ideas that are least truly ours can be adequately expressed in words.
intuition analysis instinct
An absolute can only be given in an intuition, while all the rest has to do with analysis.
heart unique reality
Intuition is a method of feeling one's way intellectually into the inner heart of a thing, in order to locate what is unique and inexpressible in it. If there is a way of grasping a reality in absolute rather than relative terms, of entering into it rather than taking up positions on it, of seizing hold of it without any translation or symbolism, then that way is metaphysics itself.
time past causes
The present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the cause.
reality faculty intellect
Some other faculty than the intellect is necessary for the apprehension of reality.
doubt atheism reason
Homo sapiens, the only creature endowed with reason, is also the only creature to pin its existence on things unreasonable.
sex civilization appeals
Sex-appeal is the keynote of our whole civilization.