Ludwig Wittgenstein Quotes
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Wisdom is passionless. But faith by contrast is what Kierkegaard calls a passion.
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The thought is the significant proposition. (4)
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The purely corporeal can be uncanny. Compare the way angels and devils are portrayed. So-called 'miracles' must be connected with this. A miracle must be, as it were, a sacred gesture.
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The whole sense of the book might be summed up the following words: what can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence.
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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.
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253. At the core of all well-founded belief, lies belief that is unfounded.
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People nowadays think that scientists exist to instruct them, poets, musicians, etc. to give them pleasure. The idea that these have something to teach them - that does not occur to them.
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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. Our life has no end in just the way in which our visual field has no limits. (6.4311)
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You could attach prices to ideas. Some cost a lot some little. … And how do you pay for ideas? I believe: with courage.
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Human beings have a physical need to tell themselves when at work: 'Let’s have done with it now,' and it’s having constantly to go on thinking in the face of this need when philosophizing that makes this work so strenuous.
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Bach wrote on the title page of his Orgelbüchlein: 'To the glory of the most high God, and that my neighbour may be benefited thereby.' That is what I would have liked to say about my work.
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Resting on your laurels is as dangerous as resting when you are walking in the snow. You doze off and die in your sleep.
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225. What I hold fast to is not one proposition but a nest of propositions.
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Religion is, as it were, the calm bottom of the sea at its deepest point, which remains calm however high the waves on the surface may be.
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In Rennen der Philosophie gewinnt, wer am langsamsten laufen kann. Oder: der, der das Ziel zuletzt erreicht.
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The way you use the word 'God' does not show whom you mean - but, rather, what you mean.
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A new word is like a fresh seed sown on the ground of the discussion.
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467. 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 them: 'This fellow isn't insane. We are only doing philosophy.'
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Ambition is the death of thought.
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Don’t say: 'They must have something in common, or they would not be called ‘games’' but look and see whether there is anything common to all. For if you look at them, you won’t see something that is common to all, but similarities, affinities, and a whole series of them at that. To repeat: don’t think, but look!
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310. A pupil and a teacher. The pupil will not let anything be explained to him, for he continually interrupts with doubts, for instance as to the existence of things, the meaning for words, etc. The teacher says 'Stop interrupting me and do as I tell you. So far your doubts don't make sense at all.'
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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.
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Die Philosophie ist ein Kampf gegen die Verhexung unsres Verstandes durch die Mittel unserer Sprache.
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Why in the world shouldn't they have regarded with awe and reverence that act by which the human race is perpetuated. Not every religion has to have St. Augustine's attitude to sex. Why even in our culture marriages are celebrated in a church, everyone present knows what is going to happen that night, but that doesn't prevent it being a religious ceremony.