Ludwig Wittgenstein Quotes & Sayings

The work of art is the object seen sub specie aeternitatis; and the good life is the world seen sub specie aeternitatis. This is the connection between art and ethics.
The usual way of looking at things sees objects as it were from the midst of them, the view sub specie aeternitatis from outside.
In such a way that they have the whole world as background. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

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. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

We are struggling with language.
We are engaged in a struggle with language. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

You might say that certain words are only pegs to hang intonations on. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

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

Logic must look after itself. In a certain sense, we cannot make mistakes in logic. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

It is a dogma of the Roman Church that the existence of God can be proved by natural reason. Now this dogma would make it impossible for me to be a Roman Catholic. If I thought of God as another being like myself, outside myself, only infinitely more powerful, then I would regard it as my duty to defy him. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

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

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. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

The world of the happy is quite different from that of the unhappy. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

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. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

Everything ritualistic must be strictly avoided, because it immediately turns rotten. Of course a kiss is a ritual too and it isn't rotten, but ritual is permissible only to the extent that it is as genuine as a kiss. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

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

Roughly speaking: to say of two things that they are identical is nonsense, and to say of one thing that it is identical with itself is to say nothing. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

How things stand, is God. God is, how things stand. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

Our craving for generality has [as one] source ... our preoccupation with the method of science. I mean the method of reducing the explanation of natural phenomena to the smallest possible number of primitive natural laws; and, in mathematics, of unifying the treatment of different topics by using a generalization. Philosophers constantly see the method of science before their eyes, and are irresistibly tempted to ask and answer in the way science does. This tendency is the real source of metaphysics, and leads the philosopher into complete darkness. I want to say here that it can never be our job to reduce anything to anything, or to explain anything. Philosophy really is purely descriptive. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

What I called jottings would not be a rendering of the text, not so to speak a translation with another symbolism. The text would not be stored up in the jottings. And why should it be stored up in our nervous system? — Ludwig Wittgenstein

The primary question about life after death is not whether it is a fact, but even if it is, what problems that really solves. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

One can defend common sense against the attacks of philosophers only by solving their puzzles, i.e., by curing them of the temptation to attack common sense ... — Ludwig Wittgenstein

In order to draw a limit to thinking, we should have to think both sides of this limit. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

So we do sometimes think because it has been found to pay. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

Telling someone something that he does not understand is pointless, even if you add that he will not understand it. (That so often happens with someone you love.) If you have a room which you do not want certain people to get into, put a lock on it for which they do not have the key. But there is no point in talking to them about it, unless of course you want them to admire the room from the outside!
The honourable thing to do is to put a lock on the door which will be noticed only by those who can open it, not by the rest. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

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. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

Proof, one might say, does not merely shew that it is like this, but: how it is like this. It shows how 13+14 yield 27. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

That which cannot be said must not be said. That which cannot be said, one must be silent thereof. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

6.4 All propositions are of equal value. 6.41 The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it there is no value - and if there were, it would be of no value. If there is a value which is of value, it must lie outside all happening and being-so. For all happening and being-so is accidental. What makes it non-accidental cannot lie in the world, for otherwise this would again be accidental. It must lie outside the world. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

The truly apocalyptic view of the world is that things do not repeat themselves. It isn't absurd, e.g., to believe that the age of science and technology is the beginning of the end for humanity; that the idea of great progress is delusion, along with the idea that the truth will ultimately be known; that there is nothing good or desirable about scientific knowledge and that mankind, in seeking it, is falling into a trap. It is by no means obvious that this is not how things are. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

I give no sources, because it is indifferent to me
whether what I have thought has already been
thought before me by another. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

A picture of a complete apple tree, however accurate, is in a certain sense much less like the tree itself than is a little daisy. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

I should not like my writing to spare other people the trouble of thinking. But, if possible, to stimulate someone to thoughts of his own. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

The mechanism which we don't understand is not anything in our soul, but rather that of the life of this expression. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

Concerning that which cannot be talked about, we should not say anything. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

Just be indipendent of the external world, so you don't have to fear for what's in it. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

Don't ask what it means, but rather how it is used. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

If there were a verb meaning "to believe falsely," it would not have any significant first person, present indicative. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

You learned the concept 'pain' when you learned language. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

For a truly religious man nothing is tragic. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

Logic takes care of itself; all we have to do is to look and see how it does it. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

What signs fail to express, their application shows. What signs slur over, their application says clearly. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

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. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

A mathematical proof must be perspicuous. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

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 ... — Ludwig Wittgenstein

Don't look for the meanings; look for the use. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

If someone does not believe in fairies, he does not need to teach his children 'There are no fairies'; he can omit to teach them the word 'fairy'. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

An image is not a picture, but a picture can correspond to it. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

Getting hold of the difficulty deep down is what is hard. Because if it is grasped near the surface it simply remains the difficulty it was. It has to be pulled out by the roots; and that involves our beginning to think about these things in a new way. The change is as decisive as, for example, that from the alchemical to the chemical way of thinking. The new way of thinking is what is so hard to establish. Once the new way of thinking has been established, the old problems vanish; indeed they become hard to recapture. For they go with our way of expressing ourselves and, if we clothe ourselves in a new form of expression, the old problems are discarded along with the old garment. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

Wishing is not acting. But willing is acting. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

Deep inside me there's a perpetual seething, like the bottom of a geyser, and I keep hoping that things will come to an eruption once and for all, so that I can turn into a different person. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

You get tragedy where the tree, instead of bending, breaks. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

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. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

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. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

We cannot therefore say in logic: This and this there is in the world, that there is not.
For that would apparently presuppose that we exclude certain possibilities, and this cannot be the case since otherwise logic must get outside the limits of the world: that is, if it could consider these limits from the other side also. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

Logic is not a theory but a reflexion of the world. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

Language disguises thought. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

When philosophers use a word
"knowledge," "being," "object," "I," "proposition," "name"
and try to grasp the essence of the thing, one must always ask oneself: is the word ever actually used in this way in the language-game which is its original home?
What we do is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

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? — Ludwig Wittgenstein

At the basis of the whole modern view of the world lies the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena. So people stop short at natural laws as at something unassailable, as did the ancients at God and Fate.
And they both are right and wrong. But the ancients were clearer, in so far as they recognized one clear conclusion, whereas in the modern system it should appear as though everything were explained. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

The 2 timeless drivers that underpin the behavior of every generation: the need to belong and the need to be significant. The limits of my language mean the limits of my world. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

Well, God has arrived. I met him on the 5.15 train ~ Keynes — Ludwig Wittgenstein

11. I am inclined to say: I 'point' in different senses to this body, to its shape, to its colour, etc.
What does that mean?
What does it mean to say I 'hear' in a different sense the piano, its sound, the piece, the player, his fluency? I 'marry', in one sense a woman, in another her money. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

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. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

We learn by rearranging what we know. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

Christianity is not a doctrine, not, I mean, a theory about what has happened & will happen to the human soul, but a description of something that actually takes place in human life. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

He who lives in the present lives in eternity. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

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. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

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. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

Not only is there no guarantee of the temporal immortality of the human soul, that is to say of its eternal survival after death; but, in any case, this assumption completely fails to accomplish the purpose for which it has always been intended. Or is some riddle solved by my surviving forever? Is not this eternal life itself as much of a riddle as our present life? — Ludwig Wittgenstein

I am still at Trattenbach, surrounded, as ever, by odiousness and baseness. I know that human beings on the average are not worth much anywhere, but here they are much more good-for-nothing and irresponsible than elsewhere. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

There are no subjects in the world. A subject is a limitation of the world. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

There is no such thing as an isolated proposition. For what I call a "proposition" is a position in the game of language. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

I did not get my picture of the world by satisfying myself of its correctness; nor do I have it because I am satisfied of its correctness. No: it is the inherited background against which I distinguish between true and false. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

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? — Ludwig Wittgenstein

I'm doing philosophy like an old woman, first I'm looking for my pencil, then I'm looking for my glasses, then I'm looking for my pencil again. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

It is clear that the causal nexus is not a nexus at all. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

Philosophy just puts everything before us, and neither explains nor deduces anything.-Since everything lies open to view there is nothing to explain — Ludwig Wittgenstein

If in life we are surrounded by death, then in the health of our intellect we are surrounded by madness. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

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

Nothing in the visual field allows you to infer that it is seen by an eye. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

If you already have a person's love no sacrifice can be too much to give for it; but any sacrifice is too great to buy it for you. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

What can be shown, cannot be said. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

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

It is clear that ethics cannot be expressed. Ethics are transcendental. (Ethics and aesthetics are one.) — Ludwig Wittgenstein

Hell isn't other people. Hell is yourself. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

The so-called law of induction cannot possibly be a law of logic, since it is obviously a proposition with a sense.
Nor, therefore, can it be an a priori law. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

The essential business of language is to assert or deny facts. Given — Ludwig Wittgenstein

If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

Self-evidence, of which Russell has said so much, can only be discarded in logic by language itself preventing every logical mistake. That logic is a priori consists in the fact that we cannot think illogically. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

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

There is not a philosophical method, though there are indeed methods, like different therapies. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

In the world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it, there is no value, - and if there were, it would be of no value. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

We have got onto slippery ice where there is no friction and so in a certain sense the conditions are ideal, but also, just because of that, we are unable to walk. We want to walk so we need friction. Back to the rough ground! — Ludwig Wittgenstein

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

Always get rid of theory private object in this way: assume that it constantly changes, but that you do not notice the change because your memory constantly deceives you. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

Where does our investigation get its importance from, since it seems only to destroy everything interesting, that is, all that is great and important? (As it were all the buildings, leaving behind only bits of stone and rubble.) What we are destroying is nothing but houses of cards and we are clearing up the ground of language on which they stand. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

Where two principles really do meet which cannot be reconciled with one another, then each man declares the other a fool and a heretic — Ludwig Wittgenstein

We just do not see how very specialized the use of "I know" is. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

Put a man in the wrong atmosphere and nothing will function as it should. He will seem unhealthy in every part. Put him back into his proper element and everything will blossom and look healthy. But if he is not in his right element, what then? Well, then he just has to make the best of appearing before the world as a cripple. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly. Everything that can be said can be said clearly. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

A philosophical problem has the form: I don't know my way about. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

To understand a sentence means to understand a language. To understand a language means to be master of a technique. — Ludwig Wittgenstein