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Ludwig Wittgenstein Quotes | Quotes said by Ludwig Wittgenstein

  • Ludwig Wittgenstein Quote #1

    476. Children do not learn that books exist, that armchairs exist, etc.,etc. - they learn to fetch books, sit in armchairs, etc.,etc.
    Later, questions about the existence of things do of course arise, Is there such a thing as a unicorn? and so on. But such a question is possible only because as a rule no corresponding question presents itself. For how does one know how to set about satisfying oneself of the existence of unicorns? How did one learn the method for determining whether something exists or not?
    477. So one must know that the objects whose names one teaches a child by an ostensive definition exist. - Why must one know they do? Isn't it enough that experience doesn't later show the opposite?
    For why should the language-game rest on some kind of knowledge?
    478. Does a child believe that milk exists? Or does it know that milk exists? Does a cat know that a mouse exists?
    479. Are we to say that the knowledge that there are physical objects comes very early or very late?

  • Ludwig Wittgenstein Quote #2

    6.4311
    Der Tod ist kein Ereignis des Lebens. Den Tod erlebt man nicht.
    Wenn man unter Ewigkeit nicht unendliche Zeitdauer, sondern Unzeitlichkeit versteht, dann lebt der ewig, der in der Gegenwart lebt.
    Unser Leben ist ebenso endlos, wie unser Gesichtsfeld grenzenlos ist.


    6.4311
    Death is not an event of life. Death is not lived through.
    If by eternity is understood not endless temporal duration but timelessness, then he lives eternally who lives in the present.
    Our life is endless in the way that our visual field is without limit.

  • Ludwig Wittgenstein Quote #3

    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.

  • Ludwig Wittgenstein Quote #4

    A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably.

  • Ludwig Wittgenstein Quote #5

    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.

  • Ludwig Wittgenstein Quote #6

    A right-hand glove could be put on the left hand if it could be turned round in four-dimensional space.

  • Ludwig Wittgenstein Quote #7

    A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.

  • Ludwig Wittgenstein Quote #8

    An entire mythology is stored within our language.

  • Ludwig Wittgenstein Quote #9

    An honest religious thinker is like a tightrope walker. He almost looks as though he were walking on nothing but air. His support is the slenderest imaginable. And yet it really is possible to walk on it.

  • Ludwig Wittgenstein Quote #10

    At the core of all well-founded belief lies belief that is unfounded.

  • Ludwig Wittgenstein Quote #11

    Belief in the causal nexus is superstition.

  • Ludwig Wittgenstein Quote #12

    But all propositions of logic say the same thing. That is, nothing.

  • Ludwig Wittgenstein Quote #13

    But some of the greatest achievements in philosophy could only be compared with taking up some books which seemed to belong together, and putting them on different shelves; nothing more being final about their positions than that they no longer lie side by side. The onlooker who doesn’t know the difficulty of the task might well think in such a case that nothing at all had been achieved.

  • Ludwig Wittgenstein Quote #14

    Christianity is not a doctrine, not, I mean, a theory about what has happened & will happen to the human soul, but a description of something that actually takes place in human life.

  • Ludwig Wittgenstein Quote #15

    Concerning that which cannot be talked about, we should not say anything.

  • Ludwig Wittgenstein Quote #16

    Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.

  • Ludwig Wittgenstein Quote #17

    Der Zweck der Philosophie ist die logische Klärung der Gedanken.
    Die Philosophie ist keine Lehre, sondern eine Tätigkeit.
    Ein philosophisches Werk besteht wesentlich aus Erläuterungen.
    Das Resultat der Philosophie sind nicht »philosophische Sätze«, sondern das Klarwerden von Sätzen.
    Die Philosophie soll die Gedanken, die sonst, gleichsam, trübe und verschwommen sind, klar machen und scharf abgrenzen.

    4.112
    The object of philosophy is the logical clarification of thoughts.
    Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.
    A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations.
    The result of philosophy is not a number of philosophical propositions, but to make propositions clear.
    Philosophy should make clear and delimit sharply the thoughts which otherwise are, as it were, opaque and blurred.

  • Ludwig Wittgenstein Quote #18

    Don't for heaven's sake, be afraid of talking nonsense! But you must pay attention to your nonsense.

  • Ludwig Wittgenstein Quote #19

    Don't get involved in partial problems, but always take flight to where there is a free view over the whole single great problem, even if this view is still not a clear one

  • Ludwig Wittgenstein Quote #20

    Don't get involved in partial problems, but always take flight to where there is a free view over the whole single great problem, even if this view is still not a clear one.

  • Ludwig Wittgenstein Quote #21

    Don't think, but look! (PI 66)

  • Ludwig Wittgenstein Quote #22

    Everything ritualistic must be strictly avoided, because it immediately turns rotten. Of course a kiss is a ritual too and it isn't rotten, but ritual is permissible only to the extent that it is as genuine as a kiss.

  • Ludwig Wittgenstein Quote #23

    Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly. Everything that can be said can be said clearly.

  • Ludwig Wittgenstein Quote #24

    For remember that in general we don't use language according to strict rules-- it hasn't been taught to us by means of strict rules, either. We, in our discussions on the other hand, constantly compare language with a calculus preceding to exact rules.

  • Ludwig Wittgenstein Quote #25

    Getting hold of the difficulty deep down is what is hard. Because if it is grasped near the surface it simply remains the difficulty it was. It has to be pulled out by the roots; and that involves our beginning to think about these things in a new way. The change is as decisive as, for example, that from the alchemical to the chemical way of thinking. The new way of thinking is what is so hard to establish. Once the new way of thinking has been established, the old problems vanish; indeed they become hard to recapture. For they go with our way of expressing ourselves and, if we clothe ourselves in a new form of expression, the old problems are discarded along with the old garment.

  • Ludwig Wittgenstein Quote #26

    How small a thought it takes to fill a life.

  • Ludwig Wittgenstein Quote #27

    Humor is not a mood but a way of looking at the world. So if it is correct to say that humor was stamped out in Nazi Germany, that does not mean that people were not in good spirits, or anything of that sort, but something much deeper and more important.

  • Ludwig Wittgenstein Quote #28

    I act with complete certainty. But this certainty is my own.

  • Ludwig Wittgenstein Quote #29

    I am my world.

  • Ludwig Wittgenstein Quote #30

    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 him: 'This fellow isn’t insane. We are only doing philosophy.

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