Quotes from Henri Bergson

To perceive means to immobilize... we seize, in the act of perception, something which outruns perception itself.

Sex appeal is the keynote of our civilization.

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.

To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.

There is nothing in philosophy which could not be said in everyday language.

Think like a man of action act like a man of thought.

It seems that laughter needs an echo.

Our laughter is always the laughter of a group.

Genius is that which forces the inertia of humanity to learn.

It is emotion that drives the intelligence forward in spite of obstacles.

Instinct perfected is a faculty of using and even constructing organized instruments; intelligence perfected is the faculty of making and using unorganized instruments.

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.

I would say act like a man of thought and think like a man of action.

In reality, the past is preserved by itself automatically.

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.

Religion is to mysticism what popularization is to science

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

Life does not proceed by the association and addition of elements, but by dissociation and division.

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.

The only cure for vanity is laughter, and the only fault that is laughable is vanity.

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.

I believe I experience creativity at every moment of my life.

The present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the cause.

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.