Quotes by Ludwig Wittgenstein

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I am my world.
Only describe, don't explain.
Living with human beings is hard!
The world is independent of my will.
There can never be surprises in logic.
A logical picture of facts is a thought.
Genius is talent exercised with courage.
Hell isn't other people. Hell is yourself.
A confession has to be part of your new life.
We use judgements as principlesof judegement.
The form is the possibility of the structure.
Anything that can be said can be said clearly.
Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.
Knowledge is in the end based on acknowledgement.
the meaning of a word is its use in the language.
Logic is not a theory but a reflexion of the world.
The world is the totality of facts, not of things.
The philosopher treats a question; like an illness.
Someone who knows too much finds it hard not to lie.
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
Not how the world is, but that it is, is the mystery.
Philosophy is not a body of doctrine but an activity.
Anything your reader can do for himself leave to him.
The limits of my language means the limits of my world.
When we can't think for ourselves, we can always quote.
My life consists in my being content to accept many things.
Ideas too sometimes fall from the tree before they are ripe.
The difficulty in philosophy is to say no more than we know.
If a question can be put at all, then it can also be answered.
For philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday.
What we can't say we can't say, and we can't whistle it either.
You can't think decently if you're not willing to hurt yourself.
Religion as madness is a madness springing from irreligiousness.
The revolutionary will be the one who can revolutionize himself.
The sole remaining task for philosophy is the analysis of language.
At the core of all well-founded belief lies belief that is unfounded.
A new word is like a fresh seed sown on the ground of the discussion.
More wisdom is contained in the best crime fiction than in philosophy.
If people never did silly things nothing intelligent would ever get done.
Nothing in the visual field allows you to infer that it is seen by an eye.
The world of the happy man is a different one from that of the unhappy man.
Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination.
There are no subjects in the world. A subject is a limitation of the world.
We are struggling with language. We are engaged in a struggle with language.
Just improve yourself; that is the only thing you can do to better the world.
The philosopher's treatment of a question is like the treatment of an illness.
No one can think a thought for me in the way that no one can don my hat for me.
In order to make an error, a man must already judge in conformity with mankind.
What is the proof that I know something? Most certainly not my saying I know it.
The solution of the riddle of life in space and time lies outside space and time.
A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.
The solution of logical problems must be neat for they set the standard of neatness.
Just be indipendent of the external world, so you don't have to fear for what's in it.
Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.
If a sign is not necessary then it is meaningless. That is the meaning of Occam’s razor.
The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. All I know is what I have words for.
The best for me, perhaps, would be if I could lie down one evening and not wake up again.
What is troubling us is the tendency to believe that the mind is like a little man within.
It is humiliating to have to appear like an empty tube which is simply inflated by a mind.
When you are philosophizing you have to descend into primeval chaos and feel at home there.
I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.
If we surrender the reins to language and not to life, then the problems of philosophy arise.
What we find in philosophy is trivial; it does not teach us new facts, only science does that.
The philosopher is not a citizen of any community of ideas, that is what makes him a philosopher.
A philosopher who is not taking part in discussions is like a boxer who never goes into the ring.
In practice, language is always more or less vague, so that what we assert is never quite precise.
One age misunderstands another; and a petty age misunderstands all the others in its own nasty way.
Don't for heaven's sake, be afraid of talking nonsense! But you must pay attention to your nonsense.
Never stay up on the barren heights of cleverness, but come down into the green valleys of silliness.
We are asleep. Our Life is a dream. But we wake up sometimes, just enough to know that we are dreaming.
Most of the propositions and questions to be found in philosophical works are not false but nonsensical.
Philosophy, as we use the word, is a fight against the fascination which forms of expression exert upon us.
Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly. Everything that can be said can be said clearly.
What a picture represents it represents independently of its truth or falsity, by means of its pictorial form.
There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.
Philosophy should make clear and delimit sharply the thoughts which otherwise are, as it were, opaque and blurred.
The fact that we cannot write down all the digits of pi is not a human shortcoming, as mathematicians sometimes think.
To convince someone of the truth, it is not enough to state it, but rather one must find the path from error to truth.
Telling someone something he does not understand is pointless, even if you add that he will not be able to understand it.
There is no such thing as an isolated proposition. For what I call a "proposition" is a position in the game of language.
The real question of life after death isn't whether or not it exists, but even if it does what problem this really solves.
We feel that even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all.
This sort of thing has got to be stopped. Bad philosophers are like slum landlords. It's my job to put them out of business.
I give no sources, because it is indifferent to me whether what I have thought has already been thought before me by another.
The man who said that one cannot step into the same river twice said something wrong; one can step into the same river twice.
It is difficult to describe paths of thought where there are already many paths laid down, and not fall into one of the grooves.
A picture of a complete apple tree, however accurate, is in a certain sense much less like the tree itself than is a little daisy.
It is so difficult to find the beginning. Or, better: it is difficult to being at the beginning. And not to try to go further back.
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.
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.
Where two principles really do meet which cannot be reconciled with one another, then each man declares the other a fool and a heretic.
If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.
If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration, but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.
If you want to go down deep you do not need to travel far; indeed, you don’t have to leave your most immediate and familiar surroundings.
I should not like my writing to spare other people the trouble of thinking. But, if possible, to stimulate someone to thoughts of his own.
Religion is, as it were, the calm bottom of the sea at its deepest point, which remains calm however high the waves on the surface may be.
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.
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.
There is no more light in a genius than in any other honest man—but he has a particular kind of lens to concentrate this light into a burning point.
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.
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