Ludwig Wittgenstein Quotes
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A new word is like a fresh seed sown on the ground of the discussion.
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If a lion could talk, we could not understand him.
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The thought is the significant proposition. (4)
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Wisdom is passionless. But faith by contrast is what Kierkegaard calls a passion.
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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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In Rennen der Philosophie gewinnt, wer am langsamsten laufen kann. Oder: der, der das Ziel zuletzt erreicht.
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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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I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.
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253. At the core of all well-founded belief, lies belief that is unfounded.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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It is clear that the causal nexus is not a nexus at all.
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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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225. What I hold fast to is not one proposition but a nest of propositions.
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Our greatest stupidities may be very wise.
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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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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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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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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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A hero looks death in the face, real death, not just the image of death. Behaving honourably in a crisis doesn't mean being able to act the part of a hero well, as in the theatre, it means being able to look death itself in the eye. For an actor may play lots of different roles, but at the end of it all he himself, the human being, is the one who has to die.