Quotes by
Ludwig Wittgenstein |
1889-1951 , Austrian philosopher
Austrian-born philosopher who spent much of his life in England. From 1929 to 1947, he taught at the University of Cambridge. He published just one slim philosophical book (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 1921). His voluminous manuscripts were published posthumously under the title Philosophical Investigations in 1953. | 40 quotes | 3,385 visits |
Quotations
| • | To believe in a God means to understand the question about the meaning of life. 16 |
| • | I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves. 9 |
| • | Someone who knows too much finds it hard not to lie. 8 |
| • | 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 it. 6 |
| • | The aim of philosophy is to erect a wall at the point where language stops anyway. 4 |
| • | Never stay up on the barren heights of cleverness, but come down into the green valleys of silliness. 4 |
| • | The limits of my language mean the limits of my world. 4 |
| • | Language disguises thought. 4 |
| • | The human body is the best picture of the human soul. 4 |
| • | Certainly it is correct to say: Conscience is the voice of God. 4 |
| • | It seems to me that, in every culture, I come across a chapter headed Wisdom. And then I know exactly what is going to follow: Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. 3 |
| • | Ambition is the death of thought. 3 |
| • | A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes. 3 |
| • | Logic takes care of itself; all we have to do is to look and see how it does it. 3 |
| • | The world is the totality of facts, not things. 3 |
| • | To imagine a language is to imagine a form of life. 3 |
| • | What is confusing for us is the tendency to believe that the mind is like a little man within. 3 |
| • | 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?” 2 |
| • | Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination. |
| • | Reading the Socratic dialogues one has the feeling: what a frightful waste of time! What's the point of these arguments that prove nothing and clarify nothing? |
| • | If I cannot say a priori what elementary propositions there are, then the attempt to do so must lead to obvious nonsense. |
| • | The mystical is not how the world is, but that it is. |
| • | There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical. |
| • | The difficulty in philosophy is to say no more than we know. |
| • | To convince someone of the truth, it is not enough to state it, but rather one must find the path from error to truth. |
| • | An entire mythology is stored within our language. |
| • | Philosophizing is: rejecting false arguments. |
| • | 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. |
| • | We are asleep. Our Life is a dream. But we wake up sometimes, just enough to know that we are dreaming. |
| • | Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of our language. |
| • | Like everything metaphysical the harmony between thought and reality is to be found in the grammar of the language. |
| • | If a lion could talk, we could not understand him. |
| • | At the core of all well-founded belief, lies belief that is unfounded. |
| • | Resting on your laurels is as dangerous as resting when you are walking in the snow. You doze off and die in your sleep. |
| • | Aim at being loved without being admired. |
| • | 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. |
| • | Words are deeds. |
| • | If people never did silly things nothing intelligent would ever get done. |
| • | Someone who knows too much finds it hard not to lie. |
| • | A philosopher who is not taking part in discussions is like a boxer who never goes into the ring. |
