Ludwig Wittgenstein's Quotes

Propositions show what they say: tautologies and contradictions show that they say nothing.

Someone who knows too much finds it hard not to lie.

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.

Humor is not a mood but a way of looking at the world. So if it is correct to say that humor was stamped out in Nazi Germany, that does not mean that people were not in good spirits, or anything of that sort, but something much deeper and more important.

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.

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.

If people never did silly things nothing intelligent would ever get done.

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.

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.

The limits of my language means the limits of my world.

I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

The human body is the best picture of the human soul.

Like everything metaphysical the harmony between thought and reality is to be found in the grammar of the language.

Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.

A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.

Logic is not a body of doctrine, but a mirror-image of the world. Logic is transcendental.

If a lion could talk, we could not understand him.

Never stay up on the barren heights of cleverness, but come down into the green valleys of silliness.

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.

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.

The world is independent of my will.

Our greatest stupidities may be very wise.

Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.

What is your aim in philosophy? To show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle.

Nowadays it is the fashion to emphasize the horrors of the last war. I didn't find it so horrible. There are just as horrible things happening all round us today, if only we had eyes to see them.

A philosopher who is not taking part in discussions is like a boxer who never goes into the ring.

There are remarks that sow and remarks that reap.

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.

It is an hypothesis that the sun will rise tomorrow: and this means that we do not know whether it will rise.