The Plotinus of our era, proponent of the Lucretian tradition, awarded the 1927 Nobel prize in Literature and France’s highest honor the Grand-Croix; Bergson developed an open and nonsystematic philosophy based on mystical experience and a revolutionary concept of Multiplicity to replace dualism and Hegel’s dialectic. Close friend and collaborator with William James; Nikos Kazantzakis studied under him, his ideas on creative evolution influenced Teilhard de Chardin, and his ideas were provocative enough to be condemned by the Vatican and criticized by Bertrand Russell, Heidegger, Sartre, T.S. Eliot, Julian Huxley, Einstein, even Virginia Woolf. A Jew converted Catholic, he emphasized immediate experience and intuition over reason and science — the sense over the words.
Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics
Two Sources of Morallity and Religion
“To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.”
from Creative Evolution
Chapters:
24. Unnecessary Baggage
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“Each step of the journey is made by following the heart instead of following the crowd and by choosing knowledge over the veils of ignorance.”
Chapters:
18. The Sick Society
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“Religion is to mysticism what popularization is to science.”
Chapters:
56. One with the Dust
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“The only cure for vanity is laughter, and the only fault that is laughable is vanity.”
from Laughter
Chapters:
9. Know When to Stop
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“Laughter is the corrective force which prevents us from becoming cranks.”
from Laughter
Chapters:
49. No Set Mind
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“Fortunately, some are born with spiritual immune systems that sooner or later give rejection to the illusory worldview grafted upon them from birth through social conditioning.”
from Creative Evolution
Chapters:
45. Complete Perfection
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“Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.”
from Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics
Chapters:
57. Wu Wei
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“The present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the cause.”
from Creative Evolution
Chapters:
40. Returning
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“The idea of the future, pregnant with an infinity of possibilities, is thus more fruitful than the future itself, and this is why we find more charm in hope than in possession, in dreams than in reality.”
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“Fortunately, some are born with spiritual immune systems that sooner or later give rejection to the illusory worldview grafted upon them from birth through social conditioning.”
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“Inner knowledge and anomalous outer experiences show us a side of reality others are oblivious to, and so begins our journey of awakening.”
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“In its entirety, probably, it follows us at every instant; all that we have felt, thought and willed from our earliest infancy is there, leaning over the present which is about to join it, pressing against the portals of consciousness that would fain leave it outside.”
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“Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.”
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“Laughter is the corrective force which prevents us from becoming cranks.”
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“The idea of the future, pregnant with an infinity of possibilities, is thus more fruitful than the future itself, and this is why we find more charm in hope than in possession, in dreams than in reality.”
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“The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory.”
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“The present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the cause.”
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“Intelligence is characterized by a natural incomprehension of life.”
from Creative Evolution
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“Sex appeal is the keynote to civilization.”
from Two Sources of Morallity and Religion
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“Intuition is instinct becoming conscious of itself, set free from the slavery of exigencies it leads us to the very depths of life itself. A type of knowledge akin to art but having for object life itself, it transcends intellect but uses intellect grow beyond the limitations of mere instinct.”
from Creative Evolution
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“Very few people, living or dead, have aided my struggle... Bergson relieved me of various unsolved philosophical problems which tormented me in my early youth”
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