C. I. Lewis Quotes
Clarence Irving Lewis was an American philosopher and the principal figure of the third generation of American pragmatism. A long-serving professor at Harvard, he made foundational contributions to modal logic in his Survey of Symbolic Logic and Symbolic Logic, and developed in Mind and the World Order a conceptual pragmatism in which a priori categorial schemes are chosen on practical grounds. The quotes below are attributed to C. I. Lewis, organized by topic.
Browse C. I. Lewis by topic
C. I. Lewis on Knowledge
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Attributed to C. I. Lewis:
“There can be no a priori knowledge save by way of categorial schemes.”
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Attributed to C. I. Lewis:
“Pragmatism is not the rejection of the a priori but the reinterpretation of it.”
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Attributed to C. I. Lewis:
“All knowledge of the world is in some way categorical.”
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“I have at last come to the end of the Faerie Queene : and though I say "at last", I almost wish he had lived to write six books more as he had hoped to do — so much have I enjoyed it.”
On Edmund Spenser 's long poem in a letter to Arthur Greeves (7 March 1916), published in The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis : Family Letters, 1905–1931 (2004) edited by Walter Hooper, p. 170 -
“Part of a diary entry dated "Wednesday–Wednesday 9–16 July", 1924, regarding Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay .”
But the man is a humbug — a vulgar, shallow, self-satisfied mind, absolutely inaccessible to the complexities and delicacies of the real world. He has the journalist's air of being a specialist in everything, of taking in all points of view and being always on the side of the angels: he merely annoys a reader who has the least experience of knowing things, of what knowing is like. There is not two -
“But the man is a humbug — a vulgar, shallow, self-satisfied mind, absolutely inaccessible to the complexities and delicacies of the real world. He has the journalist's air of being a specialist in everything, of taking in all points of view and being always on the side of the angels: he merely annoys a reader who has the least experience of knowing things, of what knowing is like. There is not two”
Lewis, C. S. (1991). Hooper, Walter. ed (in English). All My Road Before Me: The Diary of C. S. Lewis, 1922–1927 . San Diego - New York - London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. p. 344. ISBN 0151046093 . -
“I can't imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once.”
Letter to Arthur Greeves (February 1932) — in They Stand Together: The Letters of C. S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves (1914–1963) (1979), p. 439
C. I. Lewis on Life
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“Friendship is the greatest of worldly goods. Certainly to me it is the chief happiness of life. If I had to give a piece of advice to a young man about a place to live, I think I shd. say, 'sacrifice almost everything to live where you can be near your friends.”
Letter to Arthur Greeves (29 December 1935) — in They Stand Together: The Letters of C. S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves (1914–1963) (1979), p. 477
C. I. Lewis on Mind
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Attributed to C. I. Lewis:
“Mind and the world order require each other.”
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“But the man is a humbug — a vulgar, shallow, self-satisfied mind, absolutely inaccessible to the complexities and delicacies of the real world. He has the journalist's air of being a specialist in everything, of taking in all points of view and being always on the side of the angels: he merely annoys a reader who has the least experience of knowing things, of what knowing is like. There is not two pence worth of real thought or real nobility in him. But he isn't dull.”
Part of a diary entry dated "Wednesday–Wednesday 9–16 July", 1924, regarding Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay . | Lewis, C. S. (1991). Hooper, Walter. ed (in English). All My Road Before Me: The Diary of C. S. Lewis, 1922–1927 . San Diego - New York - London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. p. 344. ISBN 0151046093 . -
“For me, reason is the natural organ of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning. Imagination, producing new metaphors or revivifying old, is not the cause of truth, but its condition.”
Bluspels and Flalansferes: A Semantic Nightmare", Rehabilitations and Other Essays (1939)
C. I. Lewis on Virtue
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Attributed to C. I. Lewis:
“Values are qualities of experience, open to empirical investigation.”
Things actually not said by C. I. Lewis
A number of widely-shared lines are circulated as C. I. Lewis but are in fact from someone else. Did C. I. Lewis say these? No. Each entry below pairs the line with the person who actually wrote it.
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Did C. I. Lewis say this? No.
“Experience is a brutal teacher, but you learn. My God, do you learn.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Written for the 1993 film Shadowlands by William Nicholson and spoken by Anthony Hopkins , who played Lewis.
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Did C. I. Lewis say this? No.
“You are never too old to set another goal, or to dream a new dream.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Unknown, but also attributed to Les Brown, a motivational speaker. Commonly attributed to C.S. Lewis, but never with a primary source listed.
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Did C. I. Lewis say this? No.
“You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Commonly attributed to Mere Christianity , where it is not found. Earliest reference seems to be an unsourced attribution to George MacDonald in an 1892 issue of the Quaker periodical The British Friend .
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Did C. I. Lewis say this? No.
“Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but the actual source is Has been cited as being. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Has been cited as being in Mere Christianity , but it is not to be found there. It is in The Purpose-Driven Life by Rick Warren (2002), so though the idea may not be original with Warren, these words are likely his. | Although Rick Warren's quote in 2002 is the one most often misattributed to Lewis,
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Did C. I. Lewis say this? No.
“The homemaker has the ultimate career. All other careers exist for one purpose only—and that is to support the ultimate career.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Paraphrased from a letter C. S. Lewis wrote to Mrs. Johnson on March 16, 1955: "A housewife's work [is] surely, in reality, the most important work in the world ... your job is the one for which all others exist", as reported in The Misquotable C.S. Lewis (2018) by William O'Flaherty, p. 63
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Did C. I. Lewis say this? No.
“Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Not found in Lewis's works. | Integrity means doing the right thing at all times, without hesitation" is found in a 1943 syndicated newspaper column. Elsie Robinson, "Listen, World!" , Evening News (Harrisburg, PA), 1943-02-24, p. 10. | Integrity means doing the right thing even when no one is there
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Did C. I. Lewis say this? No.
“Children are not a distraction from more important work. They are the most important work.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Actually first said by Dr. John Trainer in 2012, as discussed on this page from William O'Flaherty, author of The Misquotable C.S. Lewis . The page also lists some of Lewis' actual quotes about children and distractions.