Ludwig Wittgenstein Quotes

276 Sourced Quotes

A man's thinking goes on within his consciousness in a seclusion in comparison with which any physical seclusion is an exhibition to public view.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
What can be said at all can be said clearly; and whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
The human body is the best picture of the human soul.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
A philosopher who is not taking part in discussions is like a boxer who never goes into the ring.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
It is so characteristic, that just when the mechanics of reproduction are so vastly improved, there are fewer and fewer people who know how the music should be played.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards; as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push it.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
Knowledge is in the end based on acknowledgement.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
Someone who knows too much finds it hard not to lie.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
This remark provides the key to the problem, how much truth there is in solipsism. For what the solipsist means is quite correct; only it cannot be said, but makes itself manifest. The world is my world: this is manifest in the fact that the limits of language (of that language which alone I understand) mean the limits of my world.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
Schiller writes in a letter [to Goethe, 17 December 1795] of a 'poetic mood'. I think I know what he means, I think I am familiar with it myself. It is the mood of receptivity to nature and one in which one's thoughts seem as vivid as nature itself.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
Kierkegaard writes: If Christianity were so easy and cozy, why should God in his Scriptures have set Heaven and Earth in motion and threatened eternal punishments? — Question: But then in that case why is this Scriptures so unclear?

Ludwig Wittgenstein
It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
A proposition is completely logically analyzed if its grammar is made completely clear: no matter what idiom it may be written or expressed in...

Ludwig Wittgenstein
To convince someone of the truth, it is not enough to state it, but rather one must find the path from error to truth.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
There is not a philosophical method, though there are indeed methods, like different therapies.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
I did not get my picture of the world by satisfying myself of its correctness; nor do I have it because I am satisfied of its correctness. No: it is the inherited background against which I distinguish between true and false.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
You could attach prices to thoughts. Some cost a lot, some a little. And how does one pay for thoughts? The answer, I think, is: with courage.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
One of the most difficult of the philosopher's tasks is to find out where the shoe pinches.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
What Eddington says about "the direction of time" and the law of entropy comes to this: time would change its direction if men should start walking backwards one day. Of course you can call it that if you like; but then you should be clear in your mind that you have said no more than that people have changed the direction they walk in.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
I am not interested in constructing a building, so much as in having a perspicuous view of the foundations of possible buildings.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
I cannot get from the nature of the proposition to the individual logical operations!!!
That is, I cannot bring out how far the proposition is the picture of the situation. I am almost inclined to give up all my efforts. ——

Ludwig Wittgenstein
The aim of the book is to set a limit to thought, or rather — not to thought, but to the expression of thoughts: for in order to be able to set a limit to thought, we should have to find both sides of the limit thinkable (i. e. we should have to be able to think what cannot be thought).
It will therefore only be in language that the limit can be set, and what lies on the other side of the limit will simply be nonsense.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
Burning in effigy. Kissing the picture of one's beloved... it aims at nothing at all; we just behave this way and then we feel satisfied.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
One often makes a remark and only later sees how true it is.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
Telling someone something he does not understand is pointless, even if you add that he will not be able to understand it.

Ludwig Wittgenstein