Ludwig Wittgenstein Quotes

When we can't think for ourselves, we can always quote

Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.

If we spoke a different language, we would perceive a somewhat different world.

The real question of life after death isn't whether or not it exists, but even if it does what problem this really solves.

I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.

The limits of my language means the limits of my world.

The human body is the best picture of the human soul.

Since social relationships are always ambiguous, since my thought is only a unit, since my thoughts create rifts as much as they unite, since my words establish contacts by being spoken and create isolation by remaining unspoken, since an immense moat separates the subjective certitude that I have for myself from the objective reality that I represent to others, since I never stop finding myself guilty even though I feel I am innocent.

If people did not sometimes do silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done.

To convince someone of the truth, it is not enough to state it, but rather one must find the path from error to truth.

The problems are solved, not by giving new information, but by arranging what we have always known.

We learn by rearranging what we know.

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

A philosopher who is not taking part in discussions is like a boxer who never goes into the ring.

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.

Hell isn't other people. Hell is yourself.

Not how the world is, but that it is, is the mystery.

A tautology's truth is certain, a proposition's possible, a contradiction's impossible.

He who lives in the present lives in eternity.

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).

To believe in a God means to see that the facts of the world are not the end of the matter.

What do I know about God and the purpose of life? I know that this world exists. That I am placed in it like my eye in its visual field. That something about it is problematic, which we call its meaning. This meaning does not lie in it but outside of it. That life is the world. That my will penetrates the world. That my will is good or evil. Therefore that good and evil are somehow connected with the meaning of the world.The meaning of life, i.e. the meaning of the world, we can call God. And connect with this the comparison of God to a father.

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.

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

Make sure that your religion is a matter between you and God only.

Language disguises thought.

If you and I are to live religious lives, it mustn't be that we talk a lot about religion, but that our manner of life is different. It is my belief that only if you try to be helpful to other people will you in the end find your way to God.

Kierkegaard was by far the most profound thinker of the last century. Kierkegaard was a saint.

Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination.

To believe in God is to see that life has a meaning.

I sit astride life like a bad rider on a horse. I only owe it to the horse's good nature that I am not thrown off at this very moment.

Knowledge is in the end based on acknowledgement.

My day passes between logic, whistling, going for walks, and being depressed. I wish to God that I were more intelligent and everything would finally become clear to me - or else that I needn't live much longer.

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.

Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.

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.

Nowadays it is the fashion to emphasize the horrors of the last war. I didn't find it so horrible. There are just as horrible things happening all round us today, if only we had eyes to see them.

Ethics and aesthetics are one.

For a truly religious man nothing is tragic.

The world of those who are happy is different from the world of those who are not.

Man has to awaken to wonder - and so perhaps do peoples. Science is a way of sending him to sleep again.

It is truly strange how long it takes to get to know oneself. I am now sixty two years old, yet just one moment ago I realised that I absolutely love lightly toasted bread. Simultaneously, I also realised that I loathe bread when it is heavily toasted. For almost sixty years, and quite unconsciously, I have been experiencing inner joy or total despair at my relationship with grilled bread.

Aim at being loved without being admired.

Resting on your laurels is as dangerous as resting when you are walking in the snow. You doze off and die in your sleep.

Only describe, don't explain.

I think one of the things you and I have to learn is that we have to live without the consolation of belonging to a Church.... Of one thing I am certain. The religion of the future will have to be extremely ascetic, and by that I don't mean just going without food and drink.

Ask yourself whether our language is complete--whether it was so before the symbolism of chemistry and the notation of the infinitesimal calculus were incorporated in it; for these are, so to speak, suburbs of our language. (And how many houses or streets does it take before a town begins to be a town?) Our language can be seen as an ancient city: a maze of little streets and squares, of old and new houses, and of houses with additions from various periods; and this surrounded by a multitude of new boroughs with straight regular streets and uniform houses.

This is how philosophers should salute each other: ‘Take your time.

What is thinkable is also possible.

Don't look for the meanings; look for the use.