Ludwig Wittgenstein Quotes
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My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.) (6.54)
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For remember that in general we don't use language according to strict rules - it hasn't been taught us by means of strict rules, either.
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When I am furious about something, I sometimes beat the ground or a tree with my walking stick. But I certainly do not believe that the ground is to blame or that my beating can help anything... And all rites are of this kind.
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Every explanation is after all an hypothesis.
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It seems to me as good as certain that we cannot get the upper hand against England. The English - the best race in the world - cannot lose! We, however, can lose and shall lose, if not this year then next year. The thought that our race is going to be beaten depresses me terribly, because I am completely German.
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Philosophers often behave like little children who scribble some marks on a piece of paper at random and then ask the grown-up 'What's that?' - It happened like this: the grown-up had drawn pictures for the child several times and said 'this is a man,' 'this is a house,' etc. And then the child makes some marks too and asks: what's this then?
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Like everything metaphysical the harmony between thought and reality is to be found in the grammar of the language.
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I squander untold effort making an arrangement of my thoughts that may have no value whatever.
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The truth can be spoken only by someone who is already at home in it; not by someone who still lives in untruthfulness, and does no more than reach out towards it from within untruthfulness.
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612. At the end of reasons comes persuasion.
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A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.
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Scepticism is not irrefutable, but obviously nonsensical, when it tries to raise doubts where no questions can be asked. For doubt can exist only where a question exists, a question only where an answer exists, and an answer only where something can be said. (6.51)
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But if you say: 'How am I to know what he means, when I see nothing but the signs he gives?' then I say: 'How is he to know what he means, when he has nothing but the signs either?'
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You can’t be reluctant to give up your lie and still tell the truth.
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What we are destroying is nothing but houses of cards and we are clearing up the ground of language on which they stood.
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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.
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Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.
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There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical. (6.522)
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Make sure that your religion is a matter between you and God only.
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The logical picture of the facts is the thought. (3)
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Courage, not cleverness; not even inspiration, is the grain of mustard that grows up to be a great tree.
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If you use a trick in logic, whom can you be tricking other than yourself?
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But ordinary language is all right.
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If someone is merely ahead of his time, it will catch up to him one day.