Ludwig Wittgenstein wiki

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein

See also[edit]

 Friedrich Hayek#Remembering My Cousin, Ludwig

Wittgenstein (1977)
 Norman Malcolm - Ludwig Wittgenstein: A
Memoir on Wikiquote
External links[edit]
Wikipedia has an article about:
Ludwig Wittgenstein
 Wittgenstein at the Internet Encyclopedia of
Philosophy
 Wittgenstein at the TIME 100
 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has an
extensive article.
 Wittgenstein Page (good organised link-index on
Wittgenstein)
 Wittgenstein's works are edited in an electronic
edition (and sold on CDROM) at the University of
Bergen in Norway.
 A collection of Ludwig Wittgenstein's manuscripts is
held by the Trinity College library
in Cambridge, England.
  Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) is a
comprehensive resource of Wittgensteinian
material.
 House Wittgenstein at Kundmanngasse 19, Vienna
 Wittgenstein Scrap Book by Ralph Lichtensteiger
 In Our Time : Wittgenstein Real audio stream
of BBC Radio 4 programme
 32 anecdotes about Wittgenstein
Categories: 
 Philosophers
 Authors
 Austrians
 English people
 British Jews
 1950s deaths
 Refugees
 Agnostics

Narcis Zarnescu 3 mar. (Acum 6 zile)

către mine
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein

1910s[edit]
 It seems to me as good as certain that we cannot
get the upper hand against England. The English —
the best race in the world — cannot lose! We,
however, can lose and shall lose, if not this year
then next year. The thought that our race is going to
be beaten depresses me terribly, because I am
completely German.
 Writing about the eventual outcome of World War
I, in which he was a volunteer in the Austro-
Hungarian army (25 October 1914), as quoted
in The First World War (2004) by Martin Gilbert,
p. 104
 I work quite diligently and wish that I were better and
smarter. And these both are one and the same.
 In a letter to Paul Engelmann (1917) as quoted
in The Idea of Justice (2010) by Amartya Sen, p.
31
 You won't — I really believe — get too much out of
reading it. Because you won't understand it; the
content will seem strange to you. In reality, it isn't
strange to you, for the point is ethical. I once wanted
to give a few words in the foreword which now
actually are not in it, which, however, I'll write to you
now because they might be a key for you: I wanted
to write that my work consists of two parts: of the
one which is here, and of everything which I
have not written. And precisely this second part is
the important one.
  On his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, in a letter
to Ludwig von Ficker (1919), published
in Wittgenstein : Sources and
Perspectives (1979) by C. Grant Luckhard
 "It is necessary to be given the prop that all
elementary props are given." This is not necessary
because it is even impossible. There is no such
prop! That all elementary props are given is
SHOWN by there being none having an elementary
sense which is not given.
 Notes of 1919, as quoted in Ludwig
Wittgenstein : The Duty of Genius (1990) by
Ray Monk
Notebooks 1914-1916[edit]
As translated by Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret
Anscombe, first edition (1961), Second edition
(1984)
 One often makes a remark and only later
sees how true it is.
 Journal entry (11 October 1914), p. 10e

 Logic takes care of itself; all we have to do is

to look and see how it does it.
 Journal entry (13 October 1914), also
in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (§ 5.47)
 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.
 Journal entry (1 November 1914)

 My difficulty is only an — enormous —

difficulty of expression.
 Journal entry (8 March 1915) p. 40

 I cannot get from the nature of the proposition

to the individual logical operations!!!
That is, I cannot bring out how far the proposition
is the picture of the situation. I am almost inclined
to give up all my efforts. ——
 Journal entries (12 March 1915 and 15 March
1915) p. 41e
 It is one of the chief skills of the philosopher
not to occupy himself with questions which
do not concern him.
 Journal entry (1 May 1915)

 Language is a part of our organism and no

less complicated than it.
 Journal entry (14 May 1915), p. 48

 One of the most difficult of the philosopher's tasks

is to find out where the shoe pinches.
 p. 61

 Certainly it is correct to say: Conscience is

the voice of God.
  p. 75

 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.
To pray is to think about the meaning of life.
 Journal entry (11 June 1916), p. 72e and 73e

 To believe in a God means to understand the

question about the meaning of life.
To believe in a God means to see that the
facts of the world are not the end of the
matter.
To believe in God means to see that life has a
meaning.
 Journal entry (8 July 1916), p. 74e
  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.
 Journal entry (8 July 1916), p. 74e

 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.
 Journal entry (24 July 1916), p. 77e

 It is true: Man is the microcosm:
I am my world.
 Journal entry (12 October 1916), p. 84e

 What cannot be imagined cannot even be

talked about.
 Journal entry (12 October 1916), p. 84e

 It is clear that the causal nexus is not a nexus

at all.
 Journal entry (12 October 1916), p. 84e
1920s[edit]
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922)[edit]
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus online at
Wikisource
What can be said at all can be said clearly, and
what we cannot talk about we must pass over in
silence.
Certain, possible, impossible: here we have the
first indication of the scale that we need in the
theory of probability.
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.
My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he
who understands me finally recognizes them as
senseless, when he has climbed out through
them, on them, over them... He must so to speak
throw away the ladder...
 The aim of the book is to set a limit to thought,
or rather — not to thought, but to the
expression of thoughts: for in order to be able
to set a limit to thought, we should have to find
both sides of the limit thinkable (i.e. we should
have to be able to think what cannot be
thought).
It will therefore only be in language that the
limit can be set, and what lies on the other side
of the limit will simply be nonsense.
  Preface

 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.
 Original German: Man könnte den ganzen
Sinn des Buches etwa in die Worte fassen:
Was sich überhaupt sagen lässt, lässt sich
klar sagen; und wovon man nicht reden
kann, darüber muss man schweigen.
 Introduction

 The world is all that is the case. (1)

 Original German: Die Welt ist alles, was der
Fall ist.
 The world is the totality of facts, not
things. (1.1)
 Original German: Die Welt ist die
Gesamtheit der Tatsachen, nicht der Dinge
 What is the case, the fact, is the existence of
atomic facts. (2)
 Original German: Was der Fall ist, die
Tatsache, ist das Bestehen von
Sachverhalten.
 The logical picture of the facts is the thought.
(3)
  Original German: Das logische Bild der
Tatsachen ist der Gedanke.
 Though a state of affairs that would contravene
the laws of physics can be represented by us
spatially, one that would contravene the laws of
geometry cannot. (3.0321)
 Original German: Wohl können wir einen
Sachverhalt räumlich darstellen, welcher
den Gesetzen der Physik, aber keinen, der
den Gesetzen der Geometrie zuwiderliefe.
 The thought is the significant proposition. (4)
 Original German: Der Gedanke ist der
sinnvolle Satz.
 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.
(4.112)
 Variant translation: Philosophy is not a
theory but an activity. A philosophical
work consists essentially of elucidations.
The result of philosophy is not a number of
 "philosophical propositions." but to make
propositions clear.
 Original German: Der Zweck der
Philosophie ist die logische Klärung der
Gedanken. Die Philosophie ist keine Lehre,
sondern eine Tätigkeit. Ein philosophisches
Werk besteht wesentlich aus
Erläuterungen. Das Resultat der
Philosophie sind nicht „philosophische
Sätze“, sondern das Klarwerden von
Sätzen. Die Philosophie soll die Gedanken,
die sonst, gleichsam, trübe und
verschwommen sind, klar machen und
scharf abgrenzen.
 It is quite impossible for a proposition to
state that it itself is true. (4.442)
 Original German: Ein Satz kann unmöglich
von sich selbst aussagen, dass er wahr ist.
 A tautology's truth is certain, a
proposition's possible, a contradiction's
impossible. (Certain, possible, impossible:
here we have the first indication of the scale
that we need in the theory of probability.)
(4.464)
 Original German: Die Wahrheit der
Tautologie ist gewiss, des Satzes möglich,
der Kontradiktion unmöglich
 Propositions are truth-functions of elementary
propositions. (An elementary proposition is a
truth-function of itself.) (5)
 Original German: Der Satz ist eine
Wahrheitsfunktion der Elementarsätze
 If I cannot say a priori what elementary
propositions there are, then the attempt to do
so must lead to obvious nonsense. (5.5571)
 Original German: Wenn ich die
Elementarsätze nicht a priori angeben
kann, dann muss es zu offenbarem Unsinn
führen, sie angeben zu wollen.
 The limits of my language mean the limits of
my world. (5.6)
 Variant translations:
 The limits of my language stand for the
limits of my world.
 The limits of my language are the limits of
my mind. All I know is what I have words
for.
 Original German: Die Grenzen meiner
Sprache bedeuten die Grenzen meiner
Welt.
 Logic pervades the world: the limits of the
world are also its limits. So we cannot say in
logic, "The world has this in it, and this, but not
that." For that would appear to presuppose that
we were excluding certain possibilities, and this
 cannot be the case, since it would require that
logic should go beyond the limits of the world;
for only in that way could it view those limits
from the other side as well. We cannot think
what we cannot think; so what we cannot think
we cannot say either. (5.61)
 Original German:Die Logik erfüllt die Welt;
die Grenzen der Welt sind auch ihre
Grenzen. Wir können also in der Logik
nicht sagen: Das und das gibt es in der
Welt, jenes nicht.Das würde nämlich
scheinbar voraussetzen, dass wir gewisse
Möglichkeiten ausschließen, und dies kann
nicht der Fall sein, da sonst die Logik über
die Grenzen der Welt hinaus müsste; wenn
sie nämlich diese Grenzen auch von der
anderen Seite betrachten könnte. Was wir
nicht denken können, das können wir nicht
denken; wir können also auch nicht sagen,
was wir nicht denken können.
 This remark provides the key to the problem,
how much truth there is in solipsism. For what
the solipsist means is quite correct; only it
cannot be said, but makes itself manifest. The
world is my world: this is manifest in the
fact that the limits of language (of that
language which alone I understand) mean
the limits of my world. (5.62)
 The world and life are one. (5.621)
  Original German: Die Welt und das Leben
sind Eins.
 I am my world. (The microcosm.) (5.63)
 Original German: Ich bin meine welt (Der
Mikrokosmos.)
 The subject does not belong to the world,
but it is a limit of the world. (5.632)
 Original German: Das Subjekt gehört nicht
zur Welt, sondern es ist eine Grenze der
Welt.
 The world of the happy is quite different
from the world of the unhappy. (6.43)
 Die Welt des Glücklichen ist eine andere
als die des Unglücklichen
 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)
 Der Tod ist kein Ereignis des Lebens. Den
Tod erlebt man nicht. Wenn man unter
Ewigkeit nicht unendliche Zeitdauer,
sondern Unzeitlichkeit versteht, dann lebt
der ewig, der in der Gegenwart lebt. Unser
 Leben ist ebenso endlos, wie unser
Gesichtsfeld grenzenlos ist.
 It is not how things are in the world that is
mystical, but that it exists. (6.44)
 Variant translation: The mystical is not how
the world is, but that it is.
 Original German: Nicht wie die Welt ist, ist
das Mystische, sondern dass sie ist.
 Scepticism is not irrefutable, but obviously
nonsensical, when it tries to raise doubts where
no questions can be asked.
For doubt can exist only where a question
exists, a question only where an answer
exists, and an answer only where
something can be said. (6.51)
 There are, indeed, things that cannot be put
into words. They make themselves
manifest. They are what is mystical. (6.522)
 Original German: Es gibt allerdings
Unaussprechliches. Dies zeigt sich, es ist
das Mystische.
 My propositions are elucidatory in this way:
he who understands me finally recognizes
them as senseless, when he has climbed
out through them, on them, over them. (He
must so to speak throw away the ladder, after
he has climbed up on it.) (6.54)
  Original German: Meine Sätze erläutern
dadurch, dass sie der, welcher mich
versteht, am Ende als unsinnig erkennt,
wenn er durch sie—auf ihnen—über sie
hinausgestiegen ist. (Er muss sozusagen
die Leiter wegwerfen, nachdem er auf ihr
hinaufgestiegen ist.)
 Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber
muss man schweigen.
 Translated: Whereof one cannot speak,
thereof one must be silent. (7)
 Also: About what one can not speak, one
must remain silent. (7)
1930s-1951[edit]
 A proposition is completely logically analyzed if
its grammar is made completely clear: no
matter what idiom it may be written or
expressed in...
 Philosophical Remarks (1930), Part I (1)

 What I give is the morphology of the use of an

expression. I show that it has kinds of uses of
which you had not dreamed. In philosophy one
feels forced to look at a concept in a certain
way. What I do is suggest, or even invent, other
ways of looking at it. I suggest possibilities of
which you had not previously thought. You
thought that there was one possibility, or only
two at most. But I made you think of others.
 Furthermore, I made you see that it was absurd
to expect the concept to conform to those
narrow possibilities. Thus your mental cramp is
relieved, and you are free to look around the
field of use of the expression and to describe
the different kinds of uses of it.
 Lectures of 1946 - 1947, as quoted
in Ludwig Wittgenstein : A Memoir (1966)
by Norman Malcolm, p. 43
 Tell them I've had a wonderful life.
 Last words, to his doctor's wife (28 April
1951)–as quoted in Ludwig Wittgenstein :
A Memoir (1966) by Norman Malcolm, p.
100
The Blue Book (c. 1931–1935; published 1965)
[edit]
The difficulty in philosophy is to say no more
than we know.
 The idea that in order to get clear about the
meaning of a general term one had to find the
common element in all its applications has
shackled philosophical investigation; for it has
not only led to no result, but also made the
philosopher dismiss as irrelevant the concrete
cases, which alone could have helped him
understand the usage of the general term.
 p. 19
  For remember that in general we don't use
language according to strict rules — it hasn't
been taught us by means of strict rules, either.
 p. 25

 What should we gain by a definition, as it

can only lead us to other undefined terms?
 p. 26

 But ordinary language is all right.

 p. 28

 The difficulty in philosophy is to say no

more than we know.
 p. 45
Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951 (1993)[edit]
Edited by James Carl Klagge and Alfred Nordmann
Frazer's account of the magical and religious
views of mankind is unsatisfactory; it makes
these views look like errors.
Every explanation is after all an hypothesis.
What has to be overcome is not difficulty of the
intellect but of the will.
Philosophical problems can be compared to
locks on safes, which can be opened by
dialing a certain word or number, so that no
force can open the door until just this word has
been hit upon, and once it is hit upon any child
can open it.
 To convince someone of the truth, it is
not enough to state it, but rather one
must find the path from error to truth.
 Ch. 7 : Remarks on Frazer's Golden
Bough, p. 119
 I must plunge into the water of doubt again
and again.
 Ch. 7 : Remarks on Frazer's Golden
Bough, p. 119
 Frazer's account of the magical and
religious views of mankind is
unsatisfactory; it makes these views look
like errors.
 Ch. 7 : Remarks on Frazer's Golden
Bough, p. 119
 Every explanation is after all an
hypothesis.
 Ch. 7 : Remarks on Frazer's Golden
Bough, p. 123
 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.
 Ch. 7 : Remarks on Frazer's Golden
Bough, p. 123
 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.
 Ch. 7 : Remarks on Frazer's Golden
Bough, p. 123
 The ceremonial (hot or cold) as opposed
to the haphazard (lukewarm)
characterizes piety.
 Ch. 7 : Remarks on Frazer's Golden
Bough, p. 127
 We must plow through the whole of
language.
 Ch. 7 : Remarks on Frazer's Golden
Bough, p. 131
 Frazer is much more savage than most of
his savages, for they are not as far
removed from the understanding of
spiritual matter as a twentieth-century
Englishman. His explanations of primitive
practices are much cruder than the meaning
of these practices themselves.
 Ch. 7 : Remarks on Frazer's Golden
Bough, p. 131
 When I am furious about something, I
sometimes beat the ground or a tree with my
walking stick. But I certainly do not believe
that the ground is to blame or that my
 beating can help anything... And all rites are
of this kind.
 Ch. 7 : Remarks on Frazer's Golden
Bough, p. 131
 An entire mythology is stored within our
language.
 Ch. 7 : Remarks on Frazer's Golden
Bough, p. 133
 What makes a subject difficult to understand
— if it is significant, important — is not that
some special instruction about abstruse
things is necessary to understand it. Rather it
is the contrast between the understanding of
the subject and what most people want to
see. Because of this the very things that are
most obvious can become the most difficult
to understand. What has to be overcome is
not difficulty of the intellect but of the
will. [Nicht eine Schwierigkeit des
Verstandes, sondern des Willens ist zu
überwinden.]
 Ch. 9 : Philosophy (chapters 86–93 of the
so called Big Typescript), p. 161
 Corresponding to TS 213, Kapitel 86

 Philosophieren ist: falsche Argumente

zurückweisen.
 Philosophizing is: rejecting false
arguments.
 The philosopher strives to find the
liberating word, that is, the word that
finally permits us to grasp what up to now
has intangibly weighed down upon our
consciousness.
 Ch. 9 : Philosophy, p. 165
 Corresponding to TS 213, Kapitel 87, 409

 The problems are dissolved in the actual

sense of the word — like a lump of sugar
in water.
 Ch. 9 : Philosophy, p. 183

 Philosophical problems can be compared

to locks on safes, which can be opened
by dialing a certain word or number, so
that no force can open the door until just
this word has been hit upon, and once it
is hit upon any child can open it.
 Ch. 9 : Philosophy, p. 175
 Variant: 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.
 Conversation of 1930, in Personal
Recollections (1981) by Rush Rhees,
Ch. 6
  Philosophy unravels the knots in our
thinking; hence its results must be simple,
but its activity is as complicated as the knots
that it unravels.
 Ch. 9 : Philosophy, p. 183

 People are deeply imbedded in

philosophical, i.e., grammatical
confusions. And to free them
presupposes pulling them out of the
immensely manifold connections they are
caught up in.
 Ch. 9 : Philosophy, p. 185

 The aim of philosophy is to erect a wall at the

point where language stops anyway.
 Ch. 9 : Philosophy, p. 187

 Philosophers are often like little children, who

first scribble random lines on a piece of
paper with their pencils, and now ask an
adult "What is that?"
 Ch. 9 : Philosophy, p. 193
Attributed from posthumous
publications[edit]
 We are asleep. Our Life is a dream. But
we wake up sometimes, just enough to
know that we are dreaming.
 What is troubling us is the tendency to
believe that the mind is like a little man
within.
 Remarks to John Wisdom, quoted in Zen
and the Work of WIttgenstein by Paul
Weinpaul in The Chicago Review Vol. 12,
(1958), p. 70
 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.
 Wittgenstein in conversation with Maurice
O'Connor Drury, cited in Rush
Rhees (eds.) Recollections of
Wittgenstein: Hermine Wittgenstein--
Fania Pascal--F.R. Leavis--John King--
M. O'C. Drury, Oxford University Press,
1984; p. xvi, and p. 168.
 Make sure that your religion is a matter
between you and God only.
 Comment to Maurice O'Connor Drury, as
quoted in Wittgenstein Reads Freud :
The Myth of the Unconscious (1996) by
Jacques Bouveresse, as translated by
Carol Cosman, p. 14
 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.
 Philosophical Remarks (1991), Part III
(27), pp.66-67
 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.
 In reaction to statements by Maurice
O'Connor Drury who expressed
disapproval of depictions of an ancient
Egyptian god with an erect phallus, in
"Conversations with Wittgenstein" as
quoted in Leading a Human Life:
Wittgenstein, Intentionality, and
Romanticism (1997) by Richard Thomas
Eldridge, p. 130
 A serious and good philosophical work
could be written consisting entirely of
jokes.
 As quoted in "A View from the Asylum"
in Philosophical Investigations from the
 Sanctity of the Press (2004), by Henry
Dribble, p. 87
 I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty
sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.
 As quoted in The Beginning of the
End (2004) by Peter Hershey, p. 109
 Kierkegaard was by far the most profound
thinker of the last century. Kierkegaard was a
saint.
 As quoted in "Wittgenstein and
Kierkegaard on the ethico-religious" by
Roe Fremstedal in Ideas in History Vol. 1
(2006)
 A good guide will take you through the
more important streets more often than
he takes you down side streets; a bad
guide will do the opposite. In philosophy
I'm a rather bad guide.
 As quoted in Wittgenstein and the
Philosophy of Information (2008) edited
by Alois Pichler and Herbert Hrachovec,
p. 140
Philosophical Investigations (1953)[edit]
Uttering a word is like striking a note on the
keyboard of the imagination.
If a lion could talk, we could not understand
him.
 Uttering a word is like striking a note on
the keyboard of the imagination.
 §6

 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.
 § 43, this has often been quoted as
simply: The meaning of a word is its use
in the language.
 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!
 § 66

 Die Philosophie ist ein Kampf gegen die

Verhexung unsres Verstandes durch die
Mittel unserer Sprache.
 Philosophy is a battle against the
bewitchment of our intelligence by
means of our language.
 § 109
 Like everything metaphysical the
harmony between thought and reality is
to be found in the grammar of the
language.
 § 112

 What we do is to bring words back from their

metaphysical to their everyday use.
 § 116

 What we are destroying is nothing but

houses of cards and we are clearing up
the ground of language on which they
stood.
 § 118

 Your questions refer to words; so I have to

talk about words.
You say: The point isn't the word, but its
meaning, and you think of the meaning as a
thing of the same kind as the word, though
also different from the word. Here the word,
there the meaning.
 § 120

 Philosophy may in no way interfere with the

actual use of language; it can in the end only
describe it.
 § 124
 The aspects of things that are most
important for us are hidden because of
their simplicity and familiarity. (One is
unable to notice something — because it is
always before one's eyes.) The real
foundations of his enquiry do not strike a
man at all. Unless that fact has at some time
struck him. — And this means: we fail to be
struck by what, once seen, is most striking
and most powerful.
 § 129

 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.
 § 133

 To obey a rule, to make a report, to give an

order, to play a game of chess,
are customs (uses, institutions)
 § 199

 If I have exhausted the justifications, I

have reached bedrock and my spade is
turned. Then I am inclined to say: "This is
simply what I do."
 § 217
 When I obey a rule, I do not choose.
I obey the rule blindly.
 § 219

 So in the end when one is doing

philosophy one gets to the point where
one would like just to emit an inarticulate
sound.
 § 261

 "Everything is already there in...." How does

it come about that [an] arrow points? Doesn't
it seem to carry in it something besides
itself? — "No, not the dead line on paper;
only the psychical thing, the meaning, can do
that." — That is both true and false. The
arrow points only in the application that a
living being makes of it.
 § 454

 My aim is: to teach you to pass from a

piece of disguised nonsense to
something that is patent nonsense.
 § 464

 But if you say: "How am I to know what he

means, when I see nothing but the signs he
gives?" then I say: "How is he to know what
he means, when he has nothing but the
signs either?"
 § 504
 Does man think because he has found that
thinking pays?
Does he bring his children up because he
has found it pays?
 § 467

 So we do sometimes think because it has

been found to pay.
 § 470

 One can mistrust one's own senses, but

not one's own belief.
If there were a verb meaning "to believe
falsely," it would not have any significant
first person, present indicative.
 Pt II, p. 162

 The human body is the best picture of the

human soul.
 Pt II, p. 178

 A man's thinking goes on within his

consciousness in a seclusion in comparison
with which any physical seclusion is an
exhibition to public view.
 Pt II, p. 189

 If God had looked into our minds he would

not have been able to see there whom we
were speaking of.
 Pt II, p. 217
  If a lion could talk, we could not
understand him.
 Pt II, p. 223 of the 1968 English edition

 What has to be accepted, the given, is —

so one could say — forms of life.
 Pt II, p. 226 of the 1968 English edition
On Certainty (1969)[edit]

Narcis Zarnescu 3 mar. (Acum 6 zile)

către mine
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstei
n

Culture and Value (1980)[edit]

Vermischte Bemerkungen (1977), as translated by
Peter Winch
See also Culture and Value
You get tragedy where the tree, instead of
bending, breaks.
Never stay up on the barren heights of
cleverness, but come down into the green
valleys of silliness.
Man has to awaken to wonder — and so
perhaps do peoples. Science is a way of
sending him to sleep again.
If people did not sometimes do silly things,
nothing intelligent would ever get done.
The way you use the word "God" does not
show whom you mean — but, rather, what
you mean.
Don't for heaven's sake, be afraid of talking
nonsense! But you must pay attention to
your nonsense.
 You get tragedy where the tree, instead
of bending, breaks.
 1929, p. 1

 A new word is like a fresh seed sown on

the ground of the discussion.
 p. 2e
 Man has to awaken to wonder — and so
perhaps do peoples. Science is a way of
sending him to sleep again.
 p. 5e

 If someone is merely ahead of his time, it

will catch up to him one day.
 p. 8e
 Reading the Socratic dialogues one has
the feeling: what a frightful waste of time!
What's the point of these arguments that
prove nothing and clarify nothing?
 p. 14e

 I read: "philosophers are no nearer to the

meaning of 'Reality' than Plato got,...".
What a strange situation. How
extraordinary that Plato could have got
even as far as he did! Or that we could not
get any further! Was it because Plato was
so extremely clever?
 p. 15e

 Philosophers often behave like little

children who scribble some marks on a
piece of paper at random and then ask the
grown-up "What's that?" — It happened
like this: the grown-up had drawn pictures
for the child several times and said "this is
a man," "this is a house," etc. And then the
child makes some marks too and asks:
what's this then?
 p. 17e

 A confession has to be part of your new

life.
 p. 18e
 If you use a trick in logic, whom can
you be tricking other than yourself?
 p. 24e

 Kierkegaard writes: If Christianity were so

easy and cozy, why should God in his
Scriptures have set Heaven and Earth in
motion and
threatened eternal punishments? —
Question: But then in that case why is this
Scriptures so unclear?
 p. 31e

 I squander untold effort making an

arrangement of my thoughts that may
have no value whatever.
 p. 33e

 Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving

oneself.
 p. 34e
 Resting on your laurels is as
dangerous as resting when you are
walking in the snow. You doze off and
die in your sleep.
 p. 35e

 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.
 p. 36e

 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.
 p. 36e

 Man könnte sagen: „Genie ist Mut im

Talent.”
 One might say: Genius is talent
exercised with courage.
 p. 38e

 Aim at being loved without being

admired.
 p. 38e
 Our greatest stupidities may be very wise.
 p. 39e

 Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving

oneself.
 p. 39e

 In Rennen der Philosophie gewinnt, wer

am langsamsten laufen kann. Oder: der,
der das Ziel zuletzt erreicht.
  In philosophy the race is to the one
who can run slowest—the one who
crosses the finish line last.
 p. 40e

 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.
 p. 41e
 The truth can be spoken only by
someone who is already at home in it;
not by someone who still lives in
untruthfulness, and does no more than
reach out towards it from within
untruthfulness.
 p. 41e

 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.
 p. 42e

 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.
 p. 43e

 Courage, not cleverness; not even

inspiration, is the grain of mustard that
grows up to be a great tree.
 p. 44e

 It is not by recognizing the want of

courage in someone else that you acquire
courage yourself..
 p. 44e

 You can’t be reluctant to give up your lie

and still tell the truth.
 p. 44e

 Worte sind Taten.

 Words are deeds.
 p. 50e
1946
 If you want to go down deep you do not
need to travel far; indeed, you don't have
to leave your most immediate and familiar
surroundings.
 p. 50e
 If people did not sometimes do silly
things, nothing intelligent would ever
get done.
 Variant: If people never did silly things
nothing intelligent would ever get
done.
 p. 50e

 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.
 p. 50e

 The way you use the word "God" does

not show whom you mean — but,
rather, what you mean.
 p. 50e

 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.
 p. 50e
 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.
 p. 51e

 "Fare well!"
"A whole world of pain is contained in
these words." How can it be contained in
them? — It is bound up in them. The
words are like an acorn from which an oak
tree can grow.
 p. 52e

 You could attach prices to thoughts. Some

cost a lot, some a little. And how does one
pay for thoughts? The answer, I think, is:
with courage.
 p. 52e

 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.
 p. 53e

 I believe that one of the things Christianity

says is that sound doctrines are all
 useless. That you have to change
your life. (Or the direction of your life.)
 p. 53e

 Wisdom is passionless. But faith by

contrast is what Kierkegaard calls
a passion.
 p. 53e

 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.
 p. 53e

 "I never believed in God before." — that I

understand. But not: "I never really
believed in Him before."
 p. 53e

 Freud's fanciful pseudo-explanations

(precisely because they are brilliant)
perform a disservice.
(Now any ass has these pictures available
to use in "explaining" symptoms of an
illness.
 p. 55e

 I am showing my pupils details of an

immense landscape which they cannot
possibly know their way around.
  p. 56e
1947
 Don't for heaven's sake, be afraid of
talking nonsense! But you must pay
attention to your nonsense.
 p. 56e

 One might say: art shows us the

miracles of nature. It is based on
the concept of the miracles of nature.
 You could attach prices to ideas. Some
cost a lot some little. … And how do you
pay for ideas? I believe: with courage.
 p. 60e

 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.
 p. 60e

 Someone who knows too much finds it

hard not to lie.
 p. 64e

 Animals come when their names are

called. Just like human beings.
 p. 67e
 Is it just I who cannot found a school, or
can a philosopher never do so?
 p. 69e

 Schiller writes in a letter [to Goethe, 17

December 1795] of a ‘poetic mood’. I think
I know what he means, I think I am familiar
with it myself. It is the mood of receptivity
to nature and one in which one’s thoughts
seem as vivid as nature itself.
 p. 75e

 It's only by thinking even more crazily

than philosophers do that you can
solve their problems.
 p. 75e

 Never stay up on the barren heights of

cleverness, but come down into the
green valleys of silliness.
 p. 76e
 Ambition is the death of thought.
 p. 77e

 I would really like to slow down the speed

of reading with continual punctuation
marks. For I would like to be read slowly.
(As I myself read.)
 p. 77e
 Nothing is more important than the
formation of fictional concepts, which
teach us at last to understand our own.
 p. 85e

 If a false thought is so much as expressed

boldly and clearly, a great deal has
already been gained.
 p. 86e

 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.
 p. 86e

 The Sabbath is not simply a time to rest, to

recuperate. We should look at our work
from the outside, not just from within.
 p. 91e

 One age misunderstands another; and a

petty age misunderstands all the others in
its own ugly way.
 p. 98e

 Philosophy hasn’t made any progress?—If

someone scratches where it itches, do we
 have to see progress? Is it not genuine
scratching otherwise, or genuine itching?
 p. 98e
Personal Recollections (1981)[edit]
Quotes of Wittgenstein found in Personal
Recollections (1981) by Rush Rhees, Ch. 6
It is so characteristic, that just when
the mechanics of reproduction are so
vastly improved, there are fewer and
fewer people who know how
the music should be played.
 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.
 Conversation of 1930
 Similar to Wittgenstein's written
notes of the "Big Typescript"
published in Philosophical
Occasions 1912-1951 (1993) edited
by James Carl Klagge and Alfred
Nordmann, p. 175: Philosophical
problems can be compared to
locks on safes, which can be
opened by dialing a certain word
or number, so that no force can
open the door until just this word
 has been hit upon, and once it is
hit upon any child can open it.
 A philosopher who is not taking part
in discussions is like a boxer who
never goes into the ring.
 Conversation of 1930

 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.
 Conversation of 1930

 For a truly religious man nothing is

tragic.
 Conversation of 1930

 It seems to me that, in every culture, I

come across a chapter
headed Wisdom. And then I know
exactly what is going to
follow: Vanity of vanities, all is
vanity.
 Conversation of 1934

 You must always be puzzled by

mental illness. The thing I would dread
most, if I became mentally ill, would be
your adopting a common sense attitude;
 that you could take it for granted that I
was deluded.
 Conversation of 1947 or 1948

 It is so characteristic, that just when

the mechanics of reproduction are so
vastly improved, there are fewer and
fewer people who know how
the music should be played.
 p. 96