A Quote by Ludwig Wittgenstein

A tautology's truth is certain, a proposition's possible, a contradiction's impossible.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Quote Topics

Certain Contradiction Impossible Possible Proposition Tautology Truth Truth Is

Quote Author

Ludwig Wittgenstein
Austrian - Philosopher
April 26, 1889 - April 29, 1951

It is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. This statement is almost a tautology. For the energy of operation of a proposition in an occasion of experience is its interest and is its importance. But of course a true proposition is more apt to be interesting than a false one.

Alfred North Whitehead

To make our position clearer, we may formulate it in another way. Let us call a proposition which records an actual or possible observation an experiential proposition. Then we may say that it is the mark of a genuine factual proposition, not that it should be equivalent to an experiential proposition, or any finite number of experiential propositions, but simply that some experiential propositions can be deduced from it in conjunction with certain other premises without being deducible from those other premises alone.

A.J. Ayer

About Thomas Hobbes: He was 40 years old before he looked on geometry; which happened accidentally. Being in a gentleman's library, Euclid's Elements lay open, and "twas the 47 El. libri I" [Pythagoras' Theorem]. He read the proposition "By God", sayd he, "this is impossible:" So he reads the demonstration of it, which referred him back to such a proposition; which proposition he read. That referred him back to another, which he also read. Et sic deinceps, that at last he was demonstratively convinced of that truth. This made him in love with geometry.

John Aubrey

Strictly speaking, no activity and no industry is possible without a certain amount of violence, no matter how little. Even the very process of living is impossible without a certain amount of violence. What we have to do is to minimize it to the greatest extent possible.

Mahatma Gandhi

What's possible exceeds what's impossible. Think about it. Do all you can do that is possible today, and in your tomorrow, what was impossible will be possible.

Mark Victor Hansen

It is wrong for a man to say that he is certain of the objective truth of any proposition unless he can produce evidence which logically justifies that certainty.

Thomas Huxley

Part of the difficulty in trying to be both an artist and a businessperson is this: You make a picture because you have seen something beyond price; then you are to turn and assign to your record of it a cash value. If the selling is not necessarily a contradiction of the truth in the picture, it is so close to being a contradiction—and the truth is always in shades of gray-that you are worn down by the threat.

Robert Adams

Many people who call themselves deflationists are deflationists about propositional truth but not about sentential truth. I only ever mention that view to distinguish it from disquotationalism. I don't really have any objection to it, other than that I don't believe in propositions, so I don't think there's any such thing as a proposition's being true. Truth, on my view, is primarily a property of representations, such as sentences and certain kinds of mental states.

Richard F. Heck

Extraordinary people visualize not what is possible or probable, but rather what is impossible. And by visualizing the impossible, they begin to see it as possible.

Cherie Carter-Scott

Now this principle of induction cannot be a purely logical truth like a tautology or an analytic statement. . . .

Karl Popper

A true proposition is a proposition belief which would never lead to such disappointment so long as the proposition is not understood otherwise than it was intended.

Charles Sanders Peirce

An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a definite proposition... A contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of anything the other person says." No, it's not.

Graham Chapman

Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.

Blaise Pascal

I chose as the campaign logo a blue rose, which means 'make possible the impossible.' I think the British with Brexit, then the Americans with the election of Donald Trump, did that: They made possible the impossible.