Ludwig Wittgenstein Quotes on Meaning
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I cannot get from the nature of the proposition to the individual logical operations!!! That is, I cannot bring out how far the proposition is the picture of the situation. I am almost inclined to give up all my efforts. (p. 41)
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The meaning of life, i.e. the meaning of the world, we can call God.
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To pray is to think about the meaning of life.
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To believe in 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.
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The thought is the significant proposition. (4)
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Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, daruber muss man schweigen.
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What should we gain by a definition, as it can only lead us to other undefined terms? (p. 26)
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The problems are dissolved in the actual sense of the word - like a lump of sugar in water. (p.183)
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Philosophers are often like little children, who first scribble random lines on a piece of paper with their pencils, and now ask an adult 'What is that?' (p.193)
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What we do is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use. #116
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Your questions refer to words; so I have to talk about words. #120
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'Everything is already there in....' How does it come about that [an] arrow points ? Doesn't it seem to carry in it something besides itself? - 'No, not the dead line on paper; only the psychical thing, the meaning, can do that.' - That is both true and false. The arrow points only in the application that a living being makes of it. (454)
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But if you say: 'How am I to know what he means, when I see nothing but the signs he gives?' then I say: 'How is he to know what he means, when he has nothing but the signs either?' (504)
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370. 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.
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Philosophers often behave like little children who scribble some marks on a piece of paper at random and then ask the grown-up 'What's that?' - It happened like this: the grown-up had drawn pictures for the child several times and said 'this is a man,' 'this is a house,' etc. And then the child makes some marks too and asks: what's this then? (p. 17e)
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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? (p. 31e)
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His explanations of primitive practices are much cruder than the meaning of these practices themselves. (p. 131)
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'Tell them I've had a wonderful life' (p. 579)
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For a large class of cases - though not for all - in which we employ the word meaning it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language.
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I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.
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Tell them I've had a wonderful life.