1001Philosophers

Gaston Bachelard Quotes on Time

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 time, drawn from across the philosopher's works.

Quotes

  • Attributed to Gaston Bachelard:

    “Science is the empire of the new.”

  • “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
  • “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