General Convention

Famous quotes containing the words general and/or convention:

    ‘A thing is called by a certain name because it instantiates a certain universal’ is obviously circular when particularized, but it looks imposing when left in this general form. And it looks imposing in this general form largely because of the inveterate philosophical habit of treating the shadows cast by words and sentences as if they were separately identifiable. Universals, like facts and propositions, are such shadows.
    David Pears (b. 1921)

    No good poetry is ever written in a manner twenty years old, for to write in such a manner shows conclusively that the writer thinks from books, convention and cliché, not from real life.
    Ezra Pound (1885–1972)