Ludwig Wittgenstein Quotes
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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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225. What I hold fast to is not one proposition but a nest of propositions.
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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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When I obey a rule, I do not choose. I obey the rule blindly.
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If a lion could talk, we could not understand him.
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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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253. At the core of all well-founded belief, lies belief that is unfounded.
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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.
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If life becomes hard to bear we think of improvements. But the most important and effective improvement, in our own attitude, hardly occurs to us, and we can decide on this only with the utmost difficulty.
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Ambition is the death of thought.
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You get tragedy where the tree, instead of bending, breaks.
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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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So in the end when one is doing philosophy one gets to the point where one would like just to emit an inarticulate sound.
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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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A religious symbol does not rest on any opinion. And error belongs only with opinion. One would like to say: This is what took place here; laugh, if you can.
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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 meaning of a question is the method of answering it: then what is the meaning of 'Do two men really mean the same by the word 'white'?' Tell me how you are searching, and I will tell you what you are searching for.
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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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My aim is: to teach you to pass from a piece of disguised nonsense to something that is patent nonsense.
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The thought is the significant proposition. (4)
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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.
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What cannot be imagined cannot even be talked about.
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If life becomes hard to bear we think of a change in our circumstances. But the most important and effective change, a change in our own attitude, hardly even occurs to us, and the resolution to take such a step is very difficult for us.