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Home > Dictionary of Science Quotations > Scientist Names Index B > Henri Louis Bergson Quotes

Henri Louis Bergson
(18 Oct 1859 - 4 Jan 1941)

French philosopher whose vitalism philosophy espoused the importance of pure intuition, duration and liberty. He was awarded the 1927 Nobel Prize in literature.

Science Quotes by Henri Louis Bergson (5 quotes)

Photo of Henri Bergson, upper body, facing front
Henri Bergson (source)
Calculation touches, at most, certain phenomena of organic destruction. Organic creation, on the contrary, the evolutionary phenomena which properly constitute life, we cannot in any way subject to a mathematical treatment.
— Henri Louis Bergson
In Creative Evolution (1911).
Science quotes on:  |  Calculation (134)  |  Certain (557)  |  Constitute (99)  |  Contrary (143)  |  Creation (350)  |  Destruction (135)  |  Life (1870)  |  Most (1728)  |  Organic (161)  |  Subject (543)  |  Treatment (135)  |  Way (1214)

It is of man’s essence to create materially and morally, to fabricate things and to fabricate himself. Homo faber is the definition I propose … Homo faber, Homo sapiens, I pay my respects to both, for they tend to merge.
— Henri Louis Bergson
The Creative Mind (1946), 84-5.
Science quotes on:  |  Both (496)  |  Create (245)  |  Definition (238)  |  Essence (85)  |  Fabricate (6)  |  Himself (461)  |  Homo Sapiens (23)  |  Man (2252)  |  Respect (212)  |  Tend (124)  |  Thing (1914)

It is with our entire past ... that we desire, will and act ... from this survival of the past it follows that consciousness cannot go through the same state twice. The circumstances may still be the same, but they will act no longer on the same person ... that is why our duration is irreversible.
— Henri Louis Bergson
Creative Evolution (1911), trans. Arthur Mitchell, 6.
Science quotes on:  |  Act (278)  |  Circumstance (139)  |  Circumstances (108)  |  Consciousness (132)  |  Desire (212)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Follow (389)  |  Irreversible (12)  |  Past (355)  |  Person (366)  |  State (505)  |  Still (614)  |  Survival (105)  |  Through (846)  |  Why (491)  |  Will (2350)

Mankind lies groaning, half-crushed beneath the weight of its own progress. Men do not sufficiently realize that their future is in their own hands. Theirs is the task of determining first of all whether they want to go on living or not. Theirs the responsibility, then, for deciding if they want merely to live, or intend to make just the extra effort required for fulfilling, even on their refractory planet, the essential function of the universe, which is a machine for the making of gods.
— Henri Louis Bergson
The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, trans. by R. Ashley Audra and Cloudesley Brereton (1935), 275.
Science quotes on:  |  Beneath (68)  |  Crush (19)  |  Do (1905)  |  Effort (243)  |  Essential (210)  |  First (1302)  |  Function (235)  |  Future (467)  |  God (776)  |  Lie (370)  |  Live (650)  |  Living (492)  |  Machine (271)  |  Making (300)  |  Mankind (356)  |  Merely (315)  |  Planet (402)  |  Progress (492)  |  Realize (157)  |  Refractory (3)  |  Required (108)  |  Responsibility (71)  |  Task (152)  |  Universe (900)  |  Want (504)  |  Weight (140)

What is found in the effect was already in the cause.
— Henri Louis Bergson
In Creative Evolution (1907).
Science quotes on:  |  Already (226)  |  Cause (561)  |  Effect (414)


Carl Sagan Thumbnail In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. (1987) -- Carl Sagan
Quotations by:Albert EinsteinIsaac NewtonLord KelvinCharles DarwinSrinivasa RamanujanCarl SaganFlorence NightingaleThomas EdisonAristotleMarie CurieBenjamin FranklinWinston ChurchillGalileo GalileiSigmund FreudRobert BunsenLouis PasteurTheodore RooseveltAbraham LincolnRonald ReaganLeonardo DaVinciMichio KakuKarl PopperJohann GoetheRobert OppenheimerCharles Kettering  ... (more people)

Quotations about:Atomic  BombBiologyChemistryDeforestationEngineeringAnatomyAstronomyBacteriaBiochemistryBotanyConservationDinosaurEnvironmentFractalGeneticsGeologyHistory of ScienceInventionJupiterKnowledgeLoveMathematicsMeasurementMedicineNatural ResourceOrganic ChemistryPhysicsPhysicianQuantum TheoryResearchScience and ArtTeacherTechnologyUniverseVolcanoVirusWind PowerWomen ScientistsX-RaysYouthZoology  ... (more topics)
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- 90 -
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- 70 -
Samuel Morse
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Paul Dirac
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- 50 -
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Niels Bohr
Nikola Tesla
Rachel Carson
Max Planck
Henry Adams
Richard Dawkins
Werner Heisenberg
Alfred Wegener
John Dalton
- 40 -
Pierre Fermat
Edward Wilson
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Giordano Bruno
JJ Thomson
Thomas Kuhn
Leonardo DaVinci
Archimedes
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- 30 -
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Richard Feynman
James Hutton
Alexander Fleming
Emile Durkheim
Benjamin Franklin
Robert Oppenheimer
Robert Hooke
Charles Kettering
- 20 -
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Hippocrates
Michael Faraday
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Francis Bacon
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- 10 -
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Isaac Asimov
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