Ludwig Wittgenstein Quotes

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

Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.

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

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

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

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

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

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Knowledge is in the end based on acknowledgement.

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

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.

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

Ethics and aesthetics are one.

Aim at being loved without being admired.

For a truly religious man nothing is tragic.

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

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.

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

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

My aim is: to teach you to pass from a piece of disguised nonsense to something that is patent nonsense.

If the will did not exist, neither would there be that centre of the world, which we call the I.

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.

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.

What is thinkable is also possible.

Philosophy is not a body of doctrine but an activity. ...Without philosophy thoughts are, as it were, cloudy and indistinct: its task is to make them clear and to give them sharp boundaries.

We see, not change of aspect, but change of interpretation.

The logic of the world is prior to all truth and falsehood.

If you tried to doubt everything you would not get as far as doubting anything. The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty.

Logic is not a body of doctrine, but a mirror-image of the world. Logic is transcendental.

Most of the propositions and questions to be found in philosophical works are not false but nonsensical.