Ludwig Wittgenstein Quotes

276 Sourced Quotes

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

Ludwig Wittgenstein
It is not by recognizing the want of courage in someone else that you acquire courage yourself..

Ludwig Wittgenstein
The problems are solved, not by giving new information, but by arranging what we have known since long.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
Philosophy may in no way interfere with the actual use of language; it can in the end only describe it.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
Human beings have a physical need to tell themselves when at work: Let's have done with it now, and it's having constantly to go on thinking in the face of this need when philosophizing that makes this work so strenuous.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
The Sabbath is not simply a time to rest, to recuperate. We should look at our work from the outside, not just from within.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
What has to be accepted, the given, is — so one could say — forms of life.

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

Ludwig Wittgenstein
To obey a rule, to make a report, to give an order, to play a game of chess, are customs (uses, institutions)

Ludwig Wittgenstein
Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. Our life has no end in just the way in which our visual field has no limits.

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
For remember that in general we don't use language according to strict rules — it hasn't been taught us by means of strict rules, either.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
What we are destroying is nothing but houses of cards and we are clearing up the ground of language on which they stood.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
The less somebody knows and understand himself the less great he is, however great may be his talent. For this reason our scientists are not great.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
One can defend common sense against the attacks of philosophers only by solving their puzzles, i.e., by curing them of the temptation to attack common sense....

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
Language is a part of our organism and no less complicated than it.

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
When you are philosophizing you have to descend into primeval chaos and feel at home there.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
If the true is what is grounded, then the ground is not true, nor yet false.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly. Everything that can be said can be said clearly. Ludwig Wittgenstein

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
I sit astride life like a bad rider on a horse. I only owe it to the horse's good nature that I am not thrown off at this very moment.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
The real discovery is the one which enables me to stop doing philosophy when I want to. The one that gives philosophy peace, so that it is no longer tormented by questions which bring itself into question.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
Philosophy aims at the logical clarification of thoughts. Philosophy is not a body of doctrine but an activity.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
A pupil and a teacher. The pupil will not let anything be explained to him, for he continually interrupts with doubts, for instance as to the existence of things, the meaning for words, etc. The teacher says "Stop interrupting me and do as I tell you. So far your doubts don't make sense at all."

Ludwig Wittgenstein
It is true: Man is the microcosm:
I am my world.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
For an answer which cannot be expressed the question too cannot be expressed. The riddle does not exist. If a question can be put at all, then it can also be answered.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably.

Ludwig Wittgenstein