Ludwig Wittgenstein - Culture and Value

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

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
There is no religious denomination in which the misuse of metaphysical expressions has been responsible for so much sin as it has in mathematics.

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
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
The popular scientific books by our scientists aren't the outcome of hard work, but are written when they are resting on their laurels.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ideas too sometimes fall from the tree before they are ripe.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
If someone is merely ahead of his time, it will catch up to him one day.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
Philosophy hasn't made any progress?—If someone scratches where it itches, do we have to see progress? Is it not genuine scratching otherwise, or genuine itching?

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

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
If life becomes hard to bear we think of a change in our circumstances. But the most important and effective change, a change in our own attitude, hardly even occurs to us, and the resolution to take such a step is very difficult for us.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
The way you use the word "God" does not show whom you mean — but, rather, what you mean.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
This is how philosophers should salute each other: 'Take your time.

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

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

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 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
The difference between a good and a poor architect is that the poor architect succumbs to every temptation and the good one resists it.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
I read: "philosophers are no nearer to the meaning of 'Reality' than Plato got,...". What a strange situation. How extraordinary that Plato could have got even as far as he did! Or that we could not get any further! Was it because Plato was so extremely clever?

Ludwig Wittgenstein
I might say: if the place I want to get to could only be reached by way of a ladder, I would give up trying to get there. For the place I really have to get to is a place I must already be at now. Anything that I might reach by climbing a ladder does not interest me.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
I think I summed up my attitude to philosophy when I said: philosophy ought really to be written only as a poetic composition.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
One age misunderstands another; and a petty age misunderstands all the others in its own ugly way.

Ludwig Wittgenstein