Ludwig Wittgenstein Quotes on Thinking
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My difficulty is only an - enormous - difficulty of expression. (p. 40)
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I once wanted to give a few words in the foreword which now actually are not in it, which, however, I'll write to you now because they might be a key for you: I wanted to write that my work consists of two parts: of the one which is here, and of everything which I have not written. And precisely this second part is the important one.
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The logical picture of the facts is the thought. (3)
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The thought is the significant proposition. (4)
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Philosophy aims at the logical clarification of thoughts. Philosophy is not a body of doctrine but an activity. A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations. Philosophy does not result in 'philosophical propositions', but rather in the clarification of propositions. Without philosophy thoughts are, as it were, cloudy and indistinct: its task is to make them clear and to give them sharp boundaries. (4.112)
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The limits of my language mean the limits of my world. (5.6)
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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.
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Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of our language. #109
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Does man think because he has found that thinking pays? Does he bring his children up because he has found it pays? (467)
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So we do sometimes think because it has been found to pay. (470)
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Don't for heaven's sake, be afraid of talking nonsense! But you must pay attention to your nonsense. (p. 56e)
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It's only by thinking even more crazily than philosophers do that you can solve their problems. (p. 75e)
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Ambition is the death of thought. (p. 77e)
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A man's thinking goes on within his consciousness in a seclusion in comparison with which any physical seclusion is an exhibition to public view.
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If we spoke a different language, we would perceive a somewhat different world.
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Like everything metaphysical the harmony between thought and reality is to be found in the grammar of the language.
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Philosophy is like trying to open a safe with a combination lock: each little adjustment of the dials seems to achieve nothing, only when everything is in place does the door open.