Ludwig Wittgenstein Quotes on Wittgenstein
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One of the most difficult of the philosopher's tasks is to find out where the shoe pinches. (p. 60)
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To pray is to think about the meaning of life.
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The world is all that is the case. (1)
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A tautology's truth is certain, a proposition's possible, a contradiction's impossible. (Certain, possible, impossible: here we have the first indication of the scale that we need in the theory of probability.) (4.464)
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Propositions are truth-functions of elementary propositions. (An elementary proposition is a truth-function of itself.) (5)
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There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical. (6.522)
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A proposition is completely logically analyzed if its grammar is made clear in no matter what idiom. Part I(1)
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For remember that in general we don't use language according to strict rules - it hasn't been taught us by means of strict rules, either. (p. 25)
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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 are destroying is nothing but houses of cards and we are clearing up the ground of language on which they stood. #118
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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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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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253. At the core of all well-founded belief, lies belief that is unfounded.
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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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A confession has to be part of your new life. (p. 18e)
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If you use a trick in logic, whom can you be tricking other than yourself? (p. 24e)
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Our greatest stupidities may be very wise. (p. 39e)
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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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Frazer's account of the magical and religious views of mankind is unsatisfactory; it makes these views look like errors. (p. 119)
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Every explanation is after all an hypothesis. (p. 123)
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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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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 them: 'This fellow isn't insane. We are only doing philosophy.' (p. 578)
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If there were a verb meaning 'to believe falsely,' it would not have any significant first person, present indicative.
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In order to be able to set a limit to thought, we should have to find both sides of the limit thinkable (i.e. we should have to be able to think what cannot be thought). (preface, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus)
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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.