Lewis, David

Philosopher American 1941 – 2001

Developed modal realism and possible worlds semantics.

440 quotes

"Music is the language the universe speaks to itself."
Music
"Faith is not certainty; it is the courage to act despite uncertainty."
Faith
"Art is the proof that humans are capable of creating meaning."
Art
"Change is not something that happens to us; it is something we do."
Change
"Gratitude is the practice of recognizing what's already here."
Gratitude
"Creativity is the intersection of knowledge and play."
Creativity
"The health of a society is measured by how it treats its most vulnerable."
Health
"Adventure is available to those willing to see the familiar as new."
Adventure
"Literature holds up a mirror we're often afraid to look into."
Literature
"Politics is the art of deciding whose interests matter."
Politics
"War is what happens when dialogue fails."
War
"Motivation without direction is just agitation."
Motivation
"Inspiration strikes those prepared to recognize it."
Inspiration
"Relationships are where we discover who we actually are."
Relationships
"Hope is not optimism; it is the decision to act as if change is possible."
Hope
"Truth is rarely comfortable, which is why we avoid it so often."
Truth
"The world is not made of atoms; it is made of stories."
Philosophy
"Possible worlds are not distant places, but ways things could have been."
Wisdom
"To understand causation, we must first understand counterfactuals."
Knowledge
"Identity through time is a puzzle, but convention often solves it."
Truth
"We are mereological nihilists about most composite objects."
Science
"Modal realism explains necessity without invoking mysterious abstract entities."
Philosophy
"The abundance of possibilities is not a problem but a feature."
Imagination
"Propositions are abstract objects, but sentences are concrete things."
Knowledge
"Convention is sometimes all we need to ground objective facts."
Truth
"Causation is not mere correlation; it requires a proper analysis."
Science
"The study of metaphysics is the study of what is possible."
Philosophy
"Language and reality need not mirror one another exactly."
Wisdom
"Properties are patterns in the world, not additions to it."
Knowledge
"To be is to be the value of a variable."
Science