Quotes by Ludwig Wittgenstein
All Quotes (165)
"There is not a single philosophical method, though there are indeed methods, different therapies, as it were."
"The war has saved my life."
"And for thoughts there is a time to plough and a time to reap."
"The world is my world: this is shown by the fact that the limits of language stand for the limits of my world…I am my world."
"It was an awful thought to go and sit there among logical positivists ..."
"Genius is what makes us forget the master's talent."
"If you want to go down deep you do not need to travel far; indeed, you don’t have to leave your most immediate and familiar surroundings."
"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."
"No pain can be greater than the pain of one person. [...] In other words, no suffering can be greater than that of one human being. [...} The whole planet cannot suffer more than a lone soul."
"If suicide is allowed then everything is allowed. If anything is not allowed then suicide is not allowed. This throws a light on the nature of ethics, for suicide is, so to speak, the elementary sin. And when one investigates it, it is like investigating mercury vapor in order to comprehend the nature of vapors."
"Either my piece is a work of the highest rank, or it is not a work of the highest rank. In the latter (and more probable) case I myself am in favour of it not being printed. And in the former case it's a matter of indifference whether it's printed twenty or a hundred years sooner or later. After all, who asks whether the Critique of Pure Reason, for example, was written in 17x or y."
"The older I grow, the more I realize how terribly difficult it is for people to understand each other, and I think that what misleads one is the fact that they all look so much like each other. If some people looked like elephants and others like cats, or fish, one wouldn’t expect them to understand each other and things would look much more like what they really are."
"What a picture represents it represents independently of its truth or falsity, by means of its pictorial form."
"A good objection helps one forward, a shallow objection, even if it is valid, is wearisome. ... The objection does not seize the matter by its root, where the life is, but so far outside that nothing can be rectified even if it is wrong. A good objection helps directly towards a solution, a shallow one must first be overcome and can, from then on, be left to one side. Just as a tree bends at a knot in the trunk in order to grow on."
"If someone tells me he has bought the outfit of a tightrope walker I am not impressed until I see what is done with it."
"Any serious philosophy can be described entirely through jokes."
"an inner process stands in need of outward criteria."
"There are, indeed, things that are inexpressible. They show themselves. They are what is mystical."
"I have extremely little courage myself, much less than you; but I have found that whenever, after a long struggle, I have screwed my courage up to do something I always felt much freer & happy after it."
"The man who said that one cannot step into the same river twice said something wrong; one can step into the same river twice."
"Philosophy is not a theory but an activity."
"The limits of my language are the limits of my universe."
"A new word is like a fresh seed sown on the ground of the discussion."
"Russell's books should be bound in two colours, those dealing with mathematical logic in red — and all students of philosophy should read them; those dealing with ethics and politics in blue — and no one should be allowed to read them."
"The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. All I know is what I have words for."
"In the middle of a conversation, someone says to me out of the blue: "I wish you luck." I am astonished; but later I realize that these words connect up with his thoughts about me. And now they do not strike me as meaningless any more."
"Waltzing is not the same thing as dancing, since the rhumba is also a dance but it is not a waltz. It therefore follows that one can waltz without dancing the waltz."
"The limits of my language means the limit of my world."
"The philosophical I is not the man, not the human body or the human soul of which psychology treats, but the metaphysical subject, the limit -not a part of the world. [...] If by eternity is understood not endless temporal duration but timelessness, then he lives eternally who lives in the present."
"At the end of reasons comes persuasion."
"Christianity is not a doctrine, not, I mean, a theory about what has happened and will happen to the human soul, but a description of something that actually takes place in human life. For ‘consciousness of sin’ is a real event and so are despair and salvation through faith. Those who speak of such things (Bunyan, for instance) are simply describing what has happened to them, whatever gloss anyone may want to put on it."
"We never arrive at fundamental propositions in the course of our investigation; we get to the boundary of language which stops us from asking further questions. We don't get to the bottom of things, but reach a point where we can go no further, where we cannot ask further questions."
"The solution of the riddle of life in space and time lies outside space and time. (It is certainly not the solution of any problems of natural science that is required)."
"The solution of the riddle of life in space and time lies outside space and time."
"If a person tells me he has been to the worst places I have no reason to judge him; but if he tells me it was his superior wisdom that enabled him to go there, then I know he is a fraud."
"I don't believe I have ever invented a line of thinking, I have always taken one over from someone else. I have simply straightaway seized on it with enthusiasm for my work of clarification. That is how Boltzmann, Hertz, Schopenhauer, Frege, Russell, Kraus, Loos, Weininger, Spengler, Sraffa have influenced me."
"What we can't say we can't say, and we can't whistle it either."
"What we find in philosophy is trivial; it does not teach us new facts, only science does that. But the proper synopsis of these trivialities is enormously difficult, and has immense importance. Philosophy is in fact the synopsis of trivialities."
"The more closely we examine actual language, the greater becomes the conflict between it and our requirement. The conflict becomes intolerable; the requirement is now in danger of becoming vacuous. — We have got on to slippery ice where there is no friction, and so, in a certain sense, the conditions are ideal; but also, just because of that, we are unable to walk. We want to walk: so we need friction. Back to the rough ground!"
"The war saved my life. I don't know what I would have done without it. Now I should have the chance to be a decent human being, for I'm standing eye to eye with death."
"If a lion could talk, we could not understand him."
"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."
"Perhaps you regard this thinking about myself as a waste of time - but how can I be a logician before I'm a human being! Far the most important thing is to settle accounts with myself!"
"I know that human beings on the average are not worth much anywhere, but here they are much more good-for-nothing and irresponsible than elsewhere."
"My aim is: to teach you to pass from a piece of disguised nonsense to something that is patent nonsense."
"Man has to awaken to wonder — and so perhaps do peoples. Science is a way of sending him off to sleep again."
"No one can think a thought for me in the way that no one can don my hat for me."
"The mechanism which we don't understand is not anything in our soul, but rather that of the life of this expression."
"More wisdom is contained in the best crime fiction than in philosophy."
"Only let's cut out the transcendental twaddle when the whole thing is as plain as a sock on the jaw."
"Logic is not a theory but a reflexion of the world."
"Philosophical problems can be compared to locks on safes, which can be opened by dialing a certain word or number, so that no force can open the door until just this word has been hit upon, and once it is hit upon any child can open it."
"Nothing in the visual field allows you to infer that it is seen by an eye."
"Indeed how might it be if things revealed their colors only when (in our terms) no light fell on them - if, for example, the sky were black? Could we not then say, only by black light do they appear to us in their full colors?"
"Telling someone something that he does not understand is pointless, even if you add that he will not understand it. (That so often happens with someone you love.) If you have a room which you do not want certain people to get into, put a lock on it for which they do not have the key. But there is no point in talking to them about it, unless of course you want them to admire the room from the outside! The honourable thing to do is to put a lock on the door which will be noticed only by those who can open it, not by the rest."
"Philosophy ought really to be written only as a form of poetry."
"Philosophy, as we use the word, is a fight against the fascination which forms of expression exert upon us."
"Philosophy must set limits to what can be thought; and, in doing so, to what cannot be thought. It must set limits to what cannot be thought by working outwards through what can be thought."
"If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration, but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present."
"It is difficult to describe paths of thought where there are already many paths laid down, and not fall into one of the grooves."
"At the basis of the whole modern view of the world lies the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena. So people stop short at natural laws as at something unassailable, as did the ancients at God and Fate. And they both are right and wrong. But the ancients were clearer, in so far as they recognized one clear conclusion, whereas in the modern system it should appear as though everything were explained."
"The philosophical I is not the man, not the human body or the human soul of which psychology treats, but the metaphysical subject, the limit - not a part of the world."
"The atmosphere surrounding this problem is terrible. Dense clouds of language lie about the crucial point. It is almost impossible to get through to it."
"Just be indipendent of the external world, so you don't have to fear for what's in it."
"It is now how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it (the world) exists at all..."
"What is the use of studying philosophy if all that it does for you is to enable you to talk with some plausibility about some abstruse questions of logic, etc., & if it does not improve your thinking about the important questions of everyday life, if it does not make you more conscientious than any ... journalist in the use of the DANGEROUS phrases such people use for their own ends."
"I realize then that the disappearance of a culture does not signify the disappearance of human value, but simply of certain means of expressing this value, yet the fact remains that I have no sympathy for the current European civilization and do not understand its goals, if it has any. So I am really writing for friends who are scattered throughout the corners of the globe."
"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."
"We have got onto slippery ice where there is no friction and so in a certain sense the conditions are ideal, but also, just because of that, we are unable to walk. We want to walk so we need friction. Back to the rough ground!"
"If by eternity is understood not endless temporal duration but timelessness, then he lives eternally who lives in the present."
"Here it can be seen that solipsism, when its implications are followed out strictly, coincides with pure realism."
"The work of art is the object seen sub specie aeternitatis [i.e., under the aspect of eternity]; and the good life is the world seen sub specie aeternitatis. This is the connection between art and ethics."
"Humor is not a mood but a way of looking at the world. It is correct to say that humor was stamped out in Nazi Germany, but that does not mean that people were not in good spirits, or anything of that sort, but something much deeper and more important."
"The riddle does not exist. If a question can be put at all, then it can also be answered."
"But all propositions of logic say the same thing. That is, nothing."
"The I, the I is what is deeplt mysterious."
"Commenting on his "Tractatus"...It consists of two parts: the one written here plus all that I have not written. And it is precisely the 2nd part that is the important one."
"A philosopher who is not taking part in discussions is like a boxer who never goes into the ring."
"To believe in God is to see that life has meaning."
"The limits of my language mean the limits of my world."
"It is so characteristic, that just when the mechanics of reproduction are so vastly improved, there are fewer and fewer people who know how music should be played."
"As there is only a logical necessity, so there is only a logical impossibility."
"A confession has to be part of your new life."
"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."
"If, for example, you were to think more deeply about death, then it would be truly strange if, in doing so, you did not encounter new images, new linguistic fields."
"The sole remaining task for philosophy is the analysis of language."
"The limits of your language are the limits of your world."
"Superstition is the belief in the causal nexus."
"If I wanted to eat an apple, and someone punched me in the stomach, taking away my appetite, then it was this punch that I originally wanted."
"The great delusion of modernity, is that the laws of nature explain the universe for us. The laws of nature describe the universe, they describe the regularities. But they explain nothing."
"You sometimes see in a wind a piece of paper blowing about anyhow. Suppose the piece of paper could make the decision: ‘Now I want to go this way.’ I say: ‘Queer, this paper always decides where it is to go, and all the time it is the wind that blows it. I know it is the wind that blows it.’ That same force which moves it also in a different way moves its decisions."
"In philosophy it is always good to put a question instead of an answer to a question. For an answer to the philosophical question may easily be unfair; disposing of it by means of another question is not."
"Our craving for generality has [as one] source … our preoccupation with the method of science. I mean the method of reducing the explanation of natural phenomena to the smallest possible number of primitive natural laws; and, in mathematics, of unifying the treatment of different topics by using a generalization. Philosophers constantly see the method of science before their eyes, and are irresistibly tempted to ask and answer in the way science does. This tendency is the real source of metaphysics, and leads the philosopher into complete darkness. I want to say here that it can never be our job to reduce anything to anything, or to explain anything. Philosophy really is “purely descriptive."
"Man feels the urge to run up against the limits of language. Think for example of the astonishment that anything at all exists. This astonishment cannot be expressed in the form of a question, and there is also no answer whatsoever. Anything we might say is a priori bound to be nonsense. Nevertheless we do run up against the limits of language. Kierkegaard too saw that there is this running up against something, and he referred to it in a fairly similar way (as running up against paradox). This running up against the limits of language is ethics."
"Always come down from the barren heights of cleverness into the green valleys of folly."
"Music conveys to us itself!"
"Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination."
"Language is a part of our organism and no less complicated than it."
"How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life."
"The human body is the best picture of the human soul."
"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."
"If there were a verb meaning "to believe falsely," it would not have any significant first person, present indicative."
"The world is everything that is the case."
"The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity. (One is unable to notice something because it is always before one’s eyes.) The real foundations of his enquiry do not strike a man at all."
"Our greatest stupidities may be very wise."
"This sort of thing has got to be stopped. Bad philosophers are like slum landlords. It's my job to put them out of business."
"It's impossible for me to say one word about all that music has meant to me in my life. How, then, can I hope to be understood?"
"Nothing is more important for teaching us to understand the concepts we have than to construct fictitious ones."
"It's not how the world is, but that it is, that is cause for astonishment."
"Understand or die."
"When I came home I expected a surprise and there was no surprise for me, so of course, I was surprised."
"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."
"Hell isn't other people. Hell is yourself." (Wittgenstein commenting on Sartre's "Hell is other people."
"The aspect of things that are most important to us are hidden because of their familiarity and simplicity."
"The work of art is the object seen sub specie aeternitatis; and the good life is the world seen sub specie aeternitatis. This is the connection between art and ethics. The usual way of looking at things sees objects as it were from the midst of them, the view sub specie aeternitatis from outside. In such a way that they have the whole world as background."
"We regard the photograph, the picture on our wall, as the object itself (the man, landscape, and so on) depicted there. This need not have been so. We could easily imagine people who did not have this relation to such pictures. Who, for example, would be repelled by photographs, because a face without color and even perhaps a face in reduced proportions struck them as inhuman."
"There are two godheads: the world and my independent I. I am either happy or unhappy, that is all. It can be said: good or evil do not exist. A man who is happy must have no fear. Not even in the face of death. Only a man who lives not in time but in the present is happy."
"I am not interested in constructing a building, so much as in having a perspicuous view of the foundations of possible buildings."
"There are no subjects in the world. A subject is a limitation of the world."
"Anything that can be said can be said clearly."
"I should not like my writing to spare other people the trouble of thinking. But, if possible, to stimulate someone to thoughts of his own."
"Concerning that which cannot be talked about, we should not say anything."
"There is a truth in Schopenhauer’s view that philosophy is an organism, and that a book on philosophy, with a beginning and end, is a sort of contradiction. ... In philosophy matters are not simple enough for us to say ‘Let’s get a rough idea’, for we do not know the country except by knowing the connections between the roads."
"The primary question about life after death is not whether it is a fact, but even if it is, what problems that really solves."
"You must always be puzzled by mental illness. The thing I would dread most, if I became mentally ill, would be your adopting a common sense attitude; that you could take it for granted that I was deluded"
"An entire mythology is stored within our language."
"If we spoke a different language, we would perceive a somewhat different world."
"To imagine a language is to imagine a form of life."
"We are asleep. Our Life is a dream. But we wake up sometimes, just enough to know that we are dreaming."
"Not how the world is, but that it is, is the mystery."
"Never stay up on the barren heights of cleverness, but come down into the green valleys of silliness."
"How small a thought it takes to fill a life."
"When we can't think for ourselves, we can always quote."
"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."
"Don't for heaven's sake, be afraid of talking nonsense! But you must pay attention to your nonsense."
"If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present."
"What is troubling us is the tendency to believe that the mind is like a little man within."
"The limits of my language means the limits of my world."
"I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves."
"Hell isn't other people. Hell is yourself."
"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 am my world."
"If people never did silly things nothing intelligent would ever get done."
"Only describe, don't explain."
"If anyone is unwilling to descend into himself, because this is too painful, he will remain superficial in his writing... If I perform to myself, then it’s this that the style expresses. And then the style cannot be my own. If you are unwilling to know what you are, your writing is a form of deceit."
"What can be shown, cannot be said."
"Knowledge is in the end based on acknowledgement."
"One often makes a remark and only later sees how true it is."
"Hegel seems to me to be always wanting to say that things which look different are really the same. Whereas my interest is in showing that things which look the same are really different. I was thinking of using as a motto for my book a quotation from King Lear: 'I’ll teach you differences'. ... 'You’d be surprised' wouldn’t be a bad motto either."
"Just improve yourself; that is the only thing you can do to better the world."
"The eternal life is given to those who live in the present."
"This is how philosophers should salute each other: "Take your time.""
"Logic takes care of itself; all we have to do is to look and see how it does it."
"If in life we are surrounded by death, then in the health of our intellect we are surrounded by madness."
"Sometimes, in doing philosophy, one just wants to utter an inarticulate sound."
"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."
"The mystical is not how the world is, but that it is."
"Don't think, but look!"
"You can't think decently if you're not willing to hurt yourself"
"Tell them I've had a wonderful life."
"Tell me, Wittgenstein's asked a friend, "why do people always say, it was natural for man to assume that the sun went round the earth rather than that the earth was rotating?" His friend replied, "Well, obviously because it just looks as though the Sun is going round the Earth." Wittgenstein replied, "Well, what would it have looked like if it had looked as though the Earth was rotating?""
"It is a dogma of the Roman Church that the existence of God can be proved by natural reason. Now this dogma would make it impossible for me to be a Roman Catholic. If I thought of God as another being like myself, outside myself, only infinitely more powerful, then I would regard it as my duty to defy him."
"A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes."