1001Philosophers

Gaston Bachelard Quotes on Knowledge

Gaston Bachelard was a French philosopher of science and imagination whose work spanned both rigorous epistemology and a phenomenology of poetic reverie. This page collects quotes attributed to Gaston Bachelard on the topic of knowledge, drawn from across the philosopher's works.

Quotes

  • Attributed to Gaston Bachelard:

    “Science is the empire of the new.”

  • Attributed to Gaston Bachelard:

    “There is no first knowledge; all knowledge is the result of struggle against earlier error.”

  • Attributed to Gaston Bachelard:

    “The mind is essentially a factory of mistakes.”

  • “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