Ludwig Wittgenstein Quotes
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225. What I hold fast to is not one proposition but a nest of propositions.
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For a large class of cases - though not for all - in which we employ the word meaning it can be explained thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language.
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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 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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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.
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Ambition is the death of thought.
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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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Aim at being loved without being admired.
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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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My aim is: to teach you to pass from a piece of disguised nonsense to something that is patent nonsense.
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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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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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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.
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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.
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What cannot be imagined cannot even be talked about.
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Philosophieren ist: falsche Argumente zurückweisen.
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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.
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Burning in effigy. Kissing the picture of one's beloved... it aims at nothing at all; we just behave this way and then we feel satisfied.
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The less somebody knows and understand himself the less great he is, however great may be his talent. For this reason our scientists are not great.
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The World and Life are one. Physiological life is of course not 'Life'. And neither is psychological life. Life is the world. Ethics does not treat of the world. Ethics must be a condition of the world, like logic. Ethics and Aesthetics are one.
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If a false thought is so much as expressed boldly and clearly, a great deal has already been gained.
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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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Frazer's account of the magical and religious views of mankind is unsatisfactory; it makes these views look like errors.
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The real discovery is the one which enables me to stop doing philosophy when I want to. The one that gives philosophy peace, so that it is no longer tormented by questions which bring itself into question.