Ludwig Wittgenstein - Thought Quotes

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Language disguises the thought; so that from the external form of the clothes one cannot infer the form of the thought they clothe, because the external form of the clothes is constructed with quite another object than to let the form of the body be recognized.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
No one can think a thought for me in the way that no one can don my hat for me.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
Thoughts rise to the surface slowly, like bubbles. (Sometimes it's as though you could see a thought, an idea, as an indistinct point far away on the horizon; and then it often approaches with astonishing swiftness.)

Ludwig Wittgenstein
There should be no need to emphasize, in this century of radio sets and electronic devices, that many dreams may be assemblages of thought-elements that convey no information whatsoever: that they may be just noise.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
A propositional sign, applied and thought out, is a thought. A thought is a proposition with a sense.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
Remember the impression one gets from good architecture, that it expresses a thought. It makes one want to respond with a gesture.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
Step by step we cross great eras in the development of thought; there is no sudden gigantic stride; a theory proceeds by slow evolution until it dominates or is destroyed.

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
I squander untold effort making an arrangement of my thoughts that may have no value whatever.

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

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
It seems to me as good as certain that we cannot get the upper hand against England. The English — the best race in the world — cannot lose! We, however, can lose and shall lose, if not this year then next year. The thought that our race is going to be beaten depresses me terribly, because I am completely German.

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
I give no sources, because it is indifferent to me whether what I have thought has already been thought before me by another.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
What I give is the morphology of the use of an expression. I show that it has kinds of uses of which you had not dreamed. In philosophy one feels forced to look at a concept in a certain way. What I do is suggest, or even invent, other ways of looking at it. I suggest possibilities of which you had not previously thought. You thought that there was one possibility, or only two at most. But I made you think of others. Furthermore, I made you see that it was absurd to expect the concept to conform to those narrow possibilities. Thus your mental cramp is relieved, and you are free to look around the field of use of the expression and to describe the different kinds of uses of it.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
It is not humanly possible to gather immediately from it what the logic of language is. Language disguises thought.

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
The logical picture of the facts is the thought.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
Like everything metaphysical the harmony between thought and reality is to be found in the grammar of the language.

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
If a false thought is so much as expressed boldly and clearly, a great deal has already been gained.

Ludwig Wittgenstein