Your corn is ripe today; mine will be so tomorrow. 'Tis profitable for us both, that I should labour with you today, and that you should aid me tomorrow.
David HumeRead
All this creative power of the mind amounts to no more than the faculty of compounding, transposing, augmenting, or diminishing the materials afforded us the by senses and experience.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The mind's creativity is derived from manipulating sensory experiences rather than creating something entirely new.
David Hume's quote emphasizes that the mind's creative abilities are not originated from a vacuum but are instead based on the raw materials provided by our senses and past experiences. This perspective suggests that all innovations and artistic expressions are simply new combinations or alterations of existing ideas and perceptions, rather than entirely original constructs.
Themes
CreativityMindExperienceSensesPhilosophy
In practice
Example use cases
In a lecture about the nature of creativity in art and science.
More from David Hume
All quotes →Eloquence, at its highest pitch, leaves little room for reason or reflection, but addresses itself entirely to the desires and affections, captivating the willing hearers, and subduing their understanding.
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All that belongs to human understanding, in this deep ignorance and obscurity, is to be sceptical, or at least cautious, and not to admit of any hypothesis whatever, much less of any which is supported by no appearance of probability.
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The great end of all human industry is the attainment of happiness
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There is a very remarkable inclination in human nature to bestow on external objects the same emotions which it observes in itself, and to find every where those ideas which are most present to it.
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To have recourse to the veracity of the supreme Being, in order to prove the veracity of our senses, is surely making a very unexpected circuit.
David HumeRead
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