Top 352 Quotes & Sayings by Ludwig Wittgenstein - Page 2

We feel that even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all.

To believe in a God means to see that the facts of the world are not the end of the matter.

The problems are solved, not by giving new information, but by arranging what we have always known.

Since social relationships are always ambiguous, since my thought is only a unit, since my thoughts create rifts as much as they unite, since my words establish contacts by being spoken and create isolation by remaining unspoken, since an immense moat separates the subjective certitude that I have for myself from the objective reality that I represent to others, since I never stop finding myself guilty even though I feel I am innocent.

Hell isn't other people. Hell is yourself.

We learn by rearranging what we know.

You can't hear God speak to someone else, you can hear him only when you are being addressed.

Don't look for the meanings; look for the use.

The object of philosophy is the logical clarification of thought.

To think that you are not following a rule is to follow a rule.

What cannot be imagined cannot even be talked about.

If people did not sometimes do silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done.

Kierkegaard was by far the most profound thinker of the last century. Kierkegaard was a saint.

There is no more light in a genius than in any other honest man - but he has a particular kind of lens to concentrate this light into a burning point.

Think of the tools in a tool-box: there is a hammer, pliers, a saw, a screwdriver, a rule, a glue-pot, nails and screws.--The function of words are as diverse as the functions of these objects.

The world of those who are happy is different from the world of those who are not.

An entire mythology is stored within our language.

Is it even always an advantage to replace an indistinct picture by a sharp one? Isn't the indistinct one often what we need?

One can mistrust one's own senses, but not one's own belief.

He who lives in the present lives in eternity.

Aim at being loved without being admired.

Philosophy is not a body of doctrine but an activity. ...Without philosophy thoughts are, as it were, cloudy and indistinct: its task is to make them clear and to give them sharp boundaries.

To convince someone of the truth, it is not enough to state it, but rather one must find the path from error to truth.

All I know is what I have words for.

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.

We are asleep. Our Life is a dream. But we wake up sometimes, just enough to know that we are dreaming.

Only describe, don't explain.

Not how the world is, but that it is, is the mystery.

It's impossible for me to say one word about all that music has meant to me in my life. How, then, can I hope to be understood?

Language disguises thought.

What has history to do with me? Mine is the first and only world! I want to report how I find the world. What others have told me about the world is a very small and incidental part of my experience. I have to judge the world, to measure things.

The depressed man lives in a depressed world.

Wishing is not acting. But willing is acting.

When we think about the future of the world, we always have in mind its being where it would be if it continued to move as we see it moving now. We do not realize that it moves not in a straight line and that its direction changes constantly.

The classifications made by philosophers and psychologists are like trying to classify clouds by their shape.

We see, not change of aspect, but change of interpretation.

My aim is: to teach you to pass from a piece of disguised nonsense to something that is patent nonsense.

A teacher who can show good, or indeed astounding results while he is teaching, is still not on that account a good teacher, for it may be that, while his pupils are under his immediate influence, he raises them to a level which is not natural to them, without developing their own capacities for work at this level, so that they immediately decline again once the teacher leaves the schoolroom.

Is my understanding only blindness to my own lack of understanding? It often seems so to me.

A French politician once wrote that it was a peculiarity of the French language that in it words occur in the order in which one thinks them.

The aspects of a thing that are most important to us are hidden to us because of their simplicity and familiarity.

What do I know about God and the purpose of life? I know that this world exists. That I am placed in it like my eye in its visual field. That something about it is problematic, which we call its meaning. This meaning does not lie in it but outside of it. That life is the world. That my will penetrates the world. That my will is good or evil. Therefore that good and evil are somehow connected with the meaning of the world.The meaning of life, i.e. the meaning of the world, we can call God. And connect with this the comparison of God to a father.

The eternal life is given to those who live in the present.

The real question of life after death isn't whether or not it exists, but even if it does what problem this really solves.

What is thinkable is also possible.

Only a man who lives not in time but in the present is happy.

Words are probes. Some reach very deep, some only to a little depth.

Everything that can be said, can be said clearly.

One must always be prepared to learn something totally new.

This is how philosophers should salute each other: ‘Take your time.

Philosophy aims at the logical clarification of thoughts. Philosophy is not a body of doctrine but an activity. A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations. Philosophy does not result in 'philosophical propositions', but rather in the clarification of propositions. Without philosophy thoughts are, as it were, cloudy and indistinct: its task is to make them clear and to give them sharp boundaries.

It is truly strange how long it takes to get to know oneself. I am now sixty two years old, yet just one moment ago I realised that I absolutely love lightly toasted bread. Simultaneously, I also realised that I loathe bread when it is heavily toasted. For almost sixty years, and quite unconsciously, I have been experiencing inner joy or total despair at my relationship with grilled bread.

Every explanation is after all an hypothesis.

[M]an is fulfilling the purpose of existence who no longer needs to have any purpose except to live. That is to say, who is content.

To believe in God is to see that life has a meaning.

Nothing is more important than the formation of fictional concepts, which teach us at last to understand our own.

Make sure that your religion is a matter between you and God only.

The world is the totality of facts, not of things

If you tried to doubt everything you would not get as far as doubting anything. The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty.

For an answer which cannot be expressed the question too cannot be expressed. The riddle does not exist. If a question can be put at all, then it can also be answered.