„[Democritus says:] By convention sweet is sweet, by convention bitter is bitter, by convention hot is hot, by convention cold is cold, by convention color is color. But in reality there are atoms and the void. That is, the objects of sense are supposed to be real and it is customary to regard them as such, but in truth they are not. Only the atoms and the void are real.“

— Democritus

Source Book in Ancient Philosophy (1907), The Fragments

Last update Jan. 13, 2021.

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Ancient Greek philosopher, pupil of Leucippus, founder of t…

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„Sweet exists by convention, bitter by convention, colour by convention; atoms and Void [alone] exist in reality. (trans. Freeman 1948), p. 92.“

— Democritus Ancient Greek philosopher, pupil of Leucippus, founder of the atomic theory

By convention sweet is sweet, bitter is bitter, hot is hot, cold is cold, color is color; but in truth there are only atoms and the void. (trans. Durant 1939), Ch. XVI, §II, p. 353; citing C. Bakewell, Sourcebook in Ancient Philosophy, New York, 1909, "Fragment O" (Diels), p. 60
Original: (el) νόμωι (γάρ φησι) γλυκὺ καὶ νόμωι πικρόν, νόμωι θερμόν, νόμωι ψυχρόν, νόμωι χροιή, ἐτεῆι  δὲ ἄτομα καὶ κενόν (Tetralogies of Thrasyllus, 9; Sext. Emp. adv. math. VII 135)

Reality

„His musical inspiration operates in a world uncluttered by conventional bar lines, conventional chord changes, and conventional ways of blowing or fingering a saxophone. Such practical 'limitations' did not even have to be overcome in his music; they somehow never existed for him. Despite this--or more accurately, because of this--his playing has a deep inner logic. Not an obvious surface logic, it is based on subtleties of reaction, subtleties of timing and color that are, I think, quite new to jazz--at least they have never appeared in so pure and direct a form.“

— Ornette Coleman American jazz musician 1930 - 2015

Gunther Schuller, quoted in [All American Music: Composition in the Late Twentieth Century, 1983, Rockwell, John, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, ISBN 0394511638].
About

Time, Change, Appearance, Thinking

„True civilization consists precisely of conventions, rituals, and modes of oblique communication whereby the chaos within and the void without may be expressed and contained within the harmonious consensus of shared social objectivity, thus maintaining our bubble of crafted reality, the necessary illusion.“

— Norman Spinrad, book The Void Captain's Tale

Source: The Void Captain's Tale (1983), Chapter 9 (p. 107)

Reality, Communication

„The sense of justice and injustice is not deriv'd from nature, but arises artificially… from education, and human conventions.“

— David Hume, book A Treatise of Human Nature

Part 2, 1.17
A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40), Book 3: Of morals

Sense, Nature, Justice, Education

„Implosion is no invention in the conventional sense, but rather the renaissance of ancient knowledge, lost over the course of time.“

— Viktor Schauberger austrian philosopher and inventor 1885 - 1958

Implosion Magazine, No. 83, p. 16 (Callum Coats: Energy Evolution (2000))
Implosion Magazine

Time, Sense, Knowledge

„The world hid its head in the sands of convention, so that by seeing nothing it might avoid Truth.“

— Radclyffe Hall, book The Well of Loneliness

Source: The Well of Loneliness

World, Truth

„By definition, the conventional wisdom of the day is widely accepted, continually reiterated and regarded not as ideology but as reality itself. Rebelling against "reality," even when its limitations are clearly perceived, is always difficult.“

— Ellen Willis writer, activist 1941 - 2006

"We Need a Radical Left," The Nation (29 June 1998)
Context: By definition, the conventional wisdom of the day is widely accepted, continually reiterated and regarded not as ideology but as reality itself. Rebelling against "reality," even when its limitations are clearly perceived, is always difficult. It means deciding things can be different and ought to be different; that your own perceptions are right and the experts and authorities wrong; that your discontent is legitimate and not merely evidence of selfishness, failure or refusal to grow up. Recognizing that "reality" is not inevitable makes it more painful; subversive thoughts provoke the urge to subversive action. But such action has consequences — rebels risk losing their jobs, failing in school, incurring the wrath of parents and spouses, suffering social ostracism. Often vociferous conservatism is sheer defensiveness: People are afraid to be suckers, to get their hopes up, to rethink their hard-won adjustments, to be branded bad or crazy.

Reality, Wisdom

„The convention by which the great events in biblical or secular history could be enacted only by magnificent physical specimens, handsome and well-groomed, went on for a long time — till the middle of the nineteenth century. Only a very few artists — perhaps only Rembrandt and Caravaggio in the first rank — were independent enough to stand against it. And I think that this convention, which was an element in the so-called grand manner, became a deadening influence on the European mind. It deadened our sense of truth, even our sense of moral responsibility.“

— Kenneth Clark Art historian, broadcaster and museum director 1903 - 1983

Source: Civilisation (1969), Ch. 5: The Hero as Artist

Time, Sense, Thinking, History

„Clichés, stock phrases, adherence to conventional, standardized codes of expression and conduct have the socially recognized function of protecting us against reality.“

— Hannah Arendt, book The Life of the Mind

Source: The Life of the Mind (1971/1978), p. 4.

Reality

„For how can one know color in perpetual green, and what good is warmth without cold to give it sweetness?“

— John Steinbeck, book Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Variant: What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.
Source: Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Color

„People can choose between the sweet lie or the bitter truth. I say the bitter truth, but many people don't want to hear it.“

— Avigdor Lieberman Israeli politician 1958

Answer to "Why are you always perceived as the bad guy?" "Spiegel Interview" http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,684789-4,00.html

Lie, Truth, People

„The point of meditation is not merely to be an honest or good person in the conventional sense, trying only to maintain our security. We must begin to become compassionate and wise in the fundamental sense, open and relating to the world as it is.“

— Chögyam Trungpa, book Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism

Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism

Relation ships, World, Personality, Sense

„I conclude that there is no such thing as a language, not if a language is anything like what many philosophers and linguists have supposed. There is therefore no such thing to be learned, mastered, or born with. We must give up the idea of a clearly defined shared structure which language-users acquire and then apply to cases. And we should try again to say how convention in any important sense is involved in language; or, as I think, we should give up the attempt to illuminate how we communicate by appeal to conventions.“

— Donald Davidson (philosopher) scriitor amator 1917 - 2003

Davidson, Donald. " A nice derangement of epitaphs http://www.hf.uio.no/csmn/english/research/news-and-events/events/davidson_derangement.pdf." Philosophical grounds of rationality: Intentions, categories, ends 4 (1986): 157.

Learning, Sense, Thinking, Idea

„Last year I asked too much of my strength. I can't go on like this. it was not possible for me, I had to step back, I didn't make anything but stones [about his paintings? ] … They wanted to see beautiful paintings but I still couldn't make them, one illusion disappears for the other. I have made Cold reality, and I have made Truth. Is there a truth, also the cold reality is a truth. What exists between them was [only] baroque convention. I threw away everything in the stove... I am messing up my time with them; what is nothing more than material is no art to me; I could not bring it out..“

— Matthijs Maris Dutch painter 1839 - 1917

translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
version in original Dutch / citaat van J. H. Weissenbruch, in het Nederlands: Ik heb verleden jaar een beetje te veel van mijn krachten gevergd, ik kan dat niet volhouden, het was mij niet mogelijk, ik moest weder terug, ik heb niets zitten maken als steenen [over zijn schilderijen?].. .Zij hebben van mij mooie schilderijen willen zien en ik heb ze nog niet kunnen maken, de eene illusie verdwijnt voor de andere, ik heb de koude werkelijkheid gemaakt, en ik heb de Waarheid gemaakt. Is er een waarheid, de koude werkelijkheid is ook een waarheid. Wat daartusschen ligt was baroque conventie. Ik heb alles in de kachel gestopt.. ..ik zit er mijn tijd op te verknoeien; wat materieel is, is voor mij geen kunst. Ik heb die er niet uit kunnen brengen.
in a letter to E. Goossens van Eijndhoven, c. 1886, published in Onze Kunst, 1918, p. 136; as cited in 'Matthijs Maris' in Palet serie; een reeks monografieën over Hollandsche en Vlaamsche schilders https://archive.org/details/paletserieeenree4amstuoft, dr. H. E. v. Gelder; H. J. W. Becht, Amsterdam, pp. 13-14
Matthijs was that year painting his famous work 'The Bride, or Novice taking the Veil / De Kerkbruid' https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Matthijs_Maris#/media/File:Matthijs_Maris_The_Bride,_or_Novice_taking_the_Veil,_c_1887.jpg

Painting, Time, Reality, Art

„Art possesses the formidable tool of pietas. Take, for instance, theatre. Theatre, by convention, agrees to be fake; thanks to this convention, which is innocuous, it can tell the truth. Art can tell the truth, because it is a transfigured language which doesn’t claim to possess divine truth; with its ability to transform relationships, it can address even the most terrible issues, exploring them without being destroyed by them. But artists have to be conscious of their role.“

— Moni Ovadia Italian actor, musician, singer and theatrical author 1946

"Uncomfortable culture – Interview with Moni Ovadia – part two" https://www.inkroci.com/culture_movie/interviews/uncomfortable-culture-interview-with-moni-ovadia-part-two.html, Inkroci (2014).

Art, Truth

„Children come running to the truth
But you've got to peel the skin to get the fruit
And while one's living high another's grieving
But what's sweet by morning is bitter by the evening
Oh - What's sweet by morning is bitter by the evening.“

— Ben Harper singer-songwriter and musician 1969

Wicked Man.
Song lyrics, There Will Be a Light (2004)

Truth, Children

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton photo

„Legally and to outward seeming the American President is the successor of Washington, and still enjoys powers devised and limited by the Convention of Philadelphia. In reality the new President differs from the Magistrate imagined by the Fathers of the Republic as widely as Monarchy from Democracy…“

— John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton British politician and historian 1834 - 1902

p, 125
The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)

Reality, Imagination, Democracy

„Perhaps the most important thing one can discover through the practice of meditation is that the "self"—the conventional sense of being a subject, a thinker, an experiencer living inside one's head—is an illusion.“

— Sam Harris American author, philosopher and neuroscientist 1967

Sam Harris, Interview with The Minimalists (19 August 2014) http://www.theminimalists.com/sam/
2010s

Sense

„So, music does not attempt to imitate Nature's sounds, but it does interpet and embody emotions awakened by Nature through a convention of its own, in a way to be aesthetically pleasing. In some such way, we, taking our hint from Nature, construct decoratively pleasing harmonies and symphonies of color expression of our sentiments.“

— Jean Metzinger French painter 1883 - 1956

Quote of Metzinger in 'The Wild Men of Paris', by Gelett Burgess https://monoskop.org/images/f/f3/Burgess_Gelett_1910_The_Wild_Men_of_Paris.pdf, in 'The Architectural Record, Vol XXVII, May 1910, p. 414

Nature, Way, Color, Music

„From the internal reality, by which I means the totality of psychological experiences, it [science] actually separates us. Art, for example, deals with many more aspects of this internal reality than does science, which confines itself deliberately and by convention to the study of one very limited class of experiences—the experiences of sense.“

— Aldous Huxley English writer 1894 - 1963

“One and Many,” p. 5–6
Do What You Will (1928)

Science, Study, Sense, Reality

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