Daily Inspiration Quote by Henri Bergson

Reason is supposed to be our crown, Bergson reminds us, but it’s also our favorite disguise. The line turns on a sly inversion: the only animal capable of rational thought is uniquely committed to irrational anchors - superstitions, metaphysical certainties, national myths, romantic destinies, market “inevitabilities.” The sting isn’t that humans sometimes lapse into nonsense; it’s that we organize our lives around it. We build calendars, laws, and identities on stories that can’t survive the very scrutiny we praise.

Bergson’s intent tracks his larger project: pushing back against the era’s confidence that intellect and mechanism could explain everything worth living. Early 20th-century Europe was drunk on positivism and industrial order, yet sliding toward mass politics, spiritual fads, and catastrophic war. In that context, “things unreasonable” aren’t merely private quirks; they’re social adhesives. The irrational functions as a technology of meaning, the shortcut that binds groups, calms fear, and gives contingency a plotline.

The subtext is less anti-reason than anti-idolatry. Bergson doesn’t deny the power of analysis; he distrusts our tendency to treat it as sufficient. Reason, he implies, can calculate routes but not supply destinations. So we smuggle in the unreasonable as purpose: a flag, a god, a soulmate, a theory of history that flatters our side. The quote works because it names an uncomfortable paradox without moralizing: the human animal survives by logic, but insists on living by myth.