Gaston Bachelard Quotes
Gaston Bachelard was a French philosopher of science and imagination whose work spanned both rigorous epistemology and a phenomenology of poetic reverie. After self-taught studies he held chairs of philosophy of science at Dijon and at the Sorbonne. The quotes below are attributed to Gaston Bachelard, organized by topic.
Browse Gaston Bachelard by topic
Gaston Bachelard on God
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“Reverie is not a mind vacuum. It is rather the gift of an hour which knows the plenitude of the soul.”
La poétique de la rêverie (The Poetics of Reverie)(1960) | Ch. 2, sect. 3 -
“The repose of sleep refreshes only the body. It rarely sets the soul at rest. The repose of the night does not belong to us. It is not the possession of our being. Sleep opens within us an inn for phantoms. In the morning we must sweep out the shadows.”
La poétique de la rêverie (The Poetics of Reverie)(1960) | Ch. 2, sect. 3
Gaston Bachelard on Justice
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“A word is a bud attempting to become a twig. How can one not dream while writing? It is the pen which dreams. The blank page gives the right to dream.”
La poétique de la rêverie (The Poetics of Reverie)(1960) | Introduction, sect. 6
Gaston Bachelard on Knowledge
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Attributed to Gaston Bachelard:
“Science is the empire of the new.”
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Attributed to Gaston Bachelard:
“There is no first knowledge; all knowledge is the result of struggle against earlier error.”
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“Man is a creation of desire, not a creation of need.”
The Psychoanalysis of Fire , ch. 2, "Fire and Reverie" (1938) -
“The Psychoanalysis of Fire , ch. 2, "Fire and Reverie" (1938)”
Man is a creation of desire, not a creation of need. -
“To disappear into deep water or to disappear toward a far horizon, to become part of depth of infinity, such is the destiny of man that finds its image in the destiny of water.”
Introduction -
“A man is a man to the extent that he is a superman. A man should be defined by the sum of those tendencies which impel him to surpass the human condition.”
Introduction -
“Clear Waters, Springtime Waters”
The reflected world is the conquest of calm
Gaston Bachelard on Life
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Attributed to Gaston Bachelard:
“A house is the topography of our intimate being.”
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“The mollusk's motto would be: one must live to build one's house, and not build one's house to live in.”
Wikiquote -
“Childhood lasts all through life. It returns to animate broad sections of adult life.... Poets will help us to find this living childhood within us, this permanent, durable immobile world.”
La poétique de la rêverie (The Poetics of Reverie)(1960) | Introduction, sect. 6 -
“To live life well is to express life poorly; if one expresses life too well, one is living it no longer.”
Fragments of a Poetics of Fire(1988) | A Retrospective Glance at the Lifework of a Master of Books -
“To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry.”
Fragments of a Poetics of Fire(1988) | A Retrospective Glance at the Lifework of a Master of Books -
“Even a minor event in the life of a child is an event of that child’s world and thus a world event.”
Fragments of a Poetics of Fire(1988) | The Phoenix, a Linguistic Phenomenon , ch. 1
Gaston Bachelard on Love
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“Literary imagination is an aesthetic object offered by a writer to a lover of books.”
Fragments of a Poetics of Fire(1988) | A Retrospective Glance at the Lifework of a Master of Books -
“One must always maintain one’s connection to the past and yet ceaselessly pull away from it. To remain in touch with the past requires a love of memory. To remain in touch with the past requires a constant imaginative effort.”
Fragments of a Poetics of Fire(1988) | A Retrospective Glance at the Lifework of a Master of Books
Gaston Bachelard on Mind
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Attributed to Gaston Bachelard:
“The mind is essentially a factory of mistakes.”
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Attributed to Gaston Bachelard:
“All that is decisive in the soul has its source in the imagination.”
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“True poetry is a function of awakening. It awakens us, but it must retain the memory of previous dreams.”
Introduction -
“Ideas are refined and multiplied in the commerce of minds. In their splendor, images effect a very simple communion of souls.”
La poétique de la rêverie (The Poetics of Reverie)(1960) | Introduction, sect. 4
Gaston Bachelard on Nature
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“The reflected world is the conquest of calm”
Clear Waters, Springtime Waters
Gaston Bachelard on Politics
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“If I were asked to name the chief benefit of the house, I should say: the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.”
Ch. 1
Gaston Bachelard on Time
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“Poetry is one of the destinies of speech.... One would say that the poetic image, in its newness, opens a future to language.”
Introduction, sect. 2 -
“Ideas are invented only as correctives to the past. Through repeated rectifications of this kind one may hope to disengage an idea that is valid.”
Fragments of a Poetics of Fire(1988) | A Retrospective Glance at the Lifework of a Master of Books
Gaston Bachelard on Truth
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“The subconscious is ceaselessly murmuring, and it is by listening to these murmurs that one hears the truth.”
La poétique de la rêverie (The Poetics of Reverie)(1960) | Ch. 2, sect. 2 -
“There is no original truth, only original error.”
Fragments of a Poetics of Fire(1988) | A Retrospective Glance at the Lifework of a Master of Books