Philosopher Wittgenstein Quotes & Sayings

The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once remarked that if you ask a man how much is two plus two and he tells you five, that is a mistake. But if you ask a man how much is two plus two and he tells you ninety-seven, that is no longer a mistake. The man you are talking to is operating with a wholly different logic from your own. — Thomas Friedman

It's only by thinking even more crazily than philosophers do that you can solve their problems. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

It is one of the chief skills of the philosopher not to occupy himself with questions which do not concern him. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

He was of the opinion... that his ideas were generally misunderstood and distorted even by those who professed to be his disciples. He doubted he would be better understood in the future. He once said he felt as though he were writing for people who would think in a different way, breathe a different air of life, from that of present-day men.

{Von Wright on his tutor, the great philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein} — Georg Henrik Von Wright

The Christmas Tree, I swear, is so large it looks like it gave birth to the one in Rockefeller Center. — Julie Sarff

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

A philosopher always finds more grass to feed upon in the valleys of stupidity than on the arid heights of intelligence. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

Long before haunted houses existed, haunted woods circled the globe. Homer knew it. The Brothers Grimm knew it. In legend, all the great mythic quests of self-discovery begin with the hero entering a dark wood. Some journeys also end there. — Robert Dunbar

Only when one thinks even much more madly than the philosophers can one solve their problems. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

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

Everything seems more bearable since I have talked to you — George Eliot

Wittgenstein imagined that the philosopher was like a therapist whose task was to put problems finally to rest, and to cure us ofbeing bewitched by them. So we are told to stop, to shut off lines of inquiry, not to find things puzzling nor to seek explanations. This is intellectual suicide. — Simon Blackburn

If you can't compete fairly, honestly, effectively, no government should intervene. Now, some governments do. They prop up failing industries. — Hillary Clinton

I am sitting with a philosopher in the garden; he says again and again 'I know that that's a tree', pointing to a tree that is near us. Someone else arrives and hears this, and I tell him: 'This fellow isn't insane. We are only doing philosophy. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

In the eighteenth century, philosophers considered the whole of human knowledge, including science, to be their field and discussed questions such as: Did the universe have a beginning? However, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, science became too technical and mathematical for the philosophers, or anyone else except a few specialists. Philosophers reduced the scope of their inquiries so much that Wittgenstein, the most famous philosopher of this century, said, "The sole remaining task for philosophy is the analysis of language." What a comedown from the great tradition of philosophy from Aristotle to Kant! — Stephen Hawking

No man can make good during working hours who does the wrong thing outside of working hours. — William J.H. Boetcker

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

It is why God created matter, most of all the human body, which has the greatest power to make spirit visible. (Thus the philosopher Wittgenstein, asked what a human soul could possibly look like, answered, "Like a human body.") — Peter Kreeft

The philosopher is not a citizen of any community of ideas, that is what makes him a philosopher. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

She had found someone who matched her, a warrior and a shield. A man she could respect; one she could argue with and enjoy. She hadn't wanted to lose that. Hadn't wanted to be alone again. — Lora Leigh