Henri Bergson Quotes on Nature
Henri Bergson was a 19th and 20th-century French philosopher, one of the most influential thinkers of the early 20th century and a major figure of continental philosophy in the period between phenomenology's founding and the rise of existentialism. This page collects quotes attributed to Henri Bergson on the topic of nature, drawn from across the philosopher's works.
Quotes
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“The present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the cause.”
Creative Evolution (1907), Chapter I, as translated by Arthur Mitchell (1911), p. 14.; italicized in the original. -
Attributed to Henri Bergson:
“Wherever anything lives, there is, open somewhere, a register in which time is being inscribed.”
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“The universe is a machine for the making of gods.”
Concluding sentences ; often just the last part of the last sentence is quoted, in the form: "The universe is a machine for making gods. -
“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.