Ludwig Wittgenstein Quotes

Roughly speaking: to say of two things that they are identical is nonsense, and to say of one thing that it is identical with itself is to say nothing.

The truly apocalyptic view of the world is that things do not repeat themselves. It isn’t absurd, e.g., to believe that the age of science and technology is the beginning of the end for humanity; that the idea of great progress is delusion, along with the idea that the truth will ultimately be known; that there is nothing good or desirable about scientific knowledge and that mankind, in seeking it, is falling into a trap. It is by no means obvious that this is not how things are.

Perhaps what is inexpressible (what I find mysterious and am not able to express) is the background against which whatever I could express has its meaning.

The right method of philosophy would be this. To say nothing except what can be said, i.e. the propositions of natural science, i.e. something that has nothing to do with philosophy: and then always, when someone else wished to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had given no meaning to certain signs in his propositions. This method would be unsatisfying to the other - he would not have the feeling that we were teaching him philosophy - but it would be the only strictly correct method. My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.) He must surmount these propositions; then he sees the world rightly. Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

It is obvious that an imagined world, however different it may be from the real one, must have something - a form - in common with it.

Knowledge is in the end based on acknowledgement.

If you and I are to live religious lives, it mustn't be that we talk a lot about religion, but that our manner of life is different. It is my belief that only if you try to be helpful to other people will you in the end find your way to God.

The world of those who are happy is different from the world of those who are not.

Some people's taste is to an educated taste as is the visual impression received by a purblind eye to that of a normal eye. Where a normal eye will see something clearly articulated, a weak eye will see a blurred patch of colour.

Language disguises thought.

There can never be surprises in logic.

Everything ritualistic must be strictly avoided, because it immediately turns rotten. Of course a kiss is a ritual too and it isn't rotten, but ritual is permissible only to the extent that it is as genuine as a kiss.

A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.

Talent is a spring from which fresh water is constantly flowing. But this spring loses its value if it is not used in the right way.

The silent adjustments to understand colloquial language are enormously complicated.

The solution of logical problems must be neat for they set the standard of neatness.

We feel that even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all.

I am sitting with a philosopher in the garden; he says again and again 'I know that that’s a tree', pointing to a tree that is near us. Someone else arrives and hears this, and I tell him: 'This fellow isn’t insane. We are only doing philosophy.

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

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

The gramophone record, the musical thought, the score, the waves of sound, all stand to one another in that pictorial internal relation, which holds between language and the world.To all of them the logical structure is common.(Like the two youths, their two horses and their lilies in the story. They are all in a certain sense one.)

If you tried to doubt everything you would not get as far as doubting anything. The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty.

The limits of your language are the limits of your world.

It is difficult to describe paths of thought where there are already many paths laid down, and not fall into one of the grooves

Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.