Ludwig Wittgenstein - Question Quotes

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The meaning of a question is the method of answering it: then what is the meaning of 'Do two men really mean the same by the word "white"?' Tell me how you are searching, and I will tell you what you are searching for.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
We feel that even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all. Of course, there is then no question left, and just this is the answer. The solution of the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of this problem.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
Your questions refer to words; so I have to talk about words.
You say : The point isn't the word, but its meaning, and you think of the meaning as a thing of the same kind as the word, though also different from the word. Here the word, there the meaning.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
But more correctly: The fact that I use the word "hand" and all the other words in my sentence without a second thought, indeed that I should stand before the abyss if I wanted so much as to try doubting their meanings — shows that absence of doubt belongs to the essence of the language-game, that the question "How do I know..." drags out the language-game, or else does away with it.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
In philosophy it is always good to put a question instead of an answer to a question. For an answer to the philosophical question may easily be unfair; disposing of it by means of another question is not.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
The philosopher's treatment of a question is like the treatment of an illness.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
It is one of the chief skills of the philosopher not to occupy himself with questions which do not concern him.

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
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
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
To believe in a God means to understand the question about the meaning of life.
To believe in a God means to see that the facts of the world are not the end of the matter.
To believe in God means to see that life has a meaning.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
Scepticism is not irrefutable, but obviously nonsensical, when it tries to raise doubts where no questions can be asked.
For doubt can exist only where a question exists, a question only where an answer exists, and an answer only where something can be said.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
Most of the propositions and questions to be found in philosophical works are not false but nonsensical.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
I may find scientific questions interesting, but they never really grip me. Only conceptual and aesthetic questions do that. At bottom I am indifferent to the solution of scientific problems; but not the other sort.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
As long as I continue to come across questions in more remote regions which I can't answer, it is understandable that I should still not be able to find my way around regions that are less remote. For how do I know that what stands in the way of an answer here is not precisely what is preventing me from clearing away the fog over there?

Ludwig Wittgenstein