Henri Bergson Quotes on Mind
Bergson's Matter and Memory (1896) develops the most original theory of mind in late-nineteenth-century philosophy. Memory, Bergson argues, is not the storage of past representations in cerebral matter but the actively contracting weight of the entire personal past as it bears on the present moment of action; the brain is not the seat of memory but the practical organ that selects which memories the present situation can usefully bring to bear. The framework dissolves the standard psycho-physical parallelism into a more nuanced account of mind and matter as differing in degree rather than in kind, and supplies the resources for the analysis of perception, dream, and pathology that the book develops at length.
Quotes
-
“Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.”
Je dirais qu'il faut agir en homme de pensée et penser en homme d'action. -
Attributed to Henri Bergson:
“The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.”
-
Attributed to Henri Bergson:
“Intelligence is characterised by a natural incomprehension of life.”
-
“I cannot escape the objection that there is no state of mind , however simple , that does not change every moment .”
An Introduction to Metaphysics (1903), translated by T. E. Hulme . New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1912, p. 44 -
“A philosopher worthy of the name has never said more than a single thing: and even then it is something he has tried to say, rather than actually said. And he has said only one thing because he has seen only one point: and at that it was not so much a vision as a contact... "L’intuition philosophique (Philosophical Intuition)" (10 April 1911); translated by Mabelle L. Andison in: Henri Bergson, The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics , Courier Dover Publications, 2012, p. 91”
Un philosophe digne de ce nom n'a jamais dit qu'une seule chose : encore a-t-il plutôt cherché à la dire qu'il ne l'a dite véritablement. Et il n'a dit qu'une seule chose parce qu'il n'a su qu'un seul point : encore fut-ce moins une vision qu'un contact... -
“The prestige of the Nobel Prize is due to many causes, but in particular to its twofold idealistic and international character: idealistic in that it has been designed for works of lofty inspiration; international in that it is awarded after the production of different countries has been minutely studied and the intellectual balance sheet of the whole world has been drawn up. Free from all other considerations and ignoring any but intellectual values, the judges have deliberately taken their place in what the philosophers have called a community of the mind.”
In a letter accepting the 1927 Nobel Prize in literature , read by the French minister, Armand Bernard. -
“I would say act like a man of thought and think like a man of action .”
Speech at the Descartes Conference in Paris (1937)