Ludwig Wittgenstein

Aim at being loved without being admired.

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

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

The world is the totality of facts not of things.

Transparency painted in a picture produces its effect in a different way than opaqueness.

One of the most misleading representational techniques in our language is the use of the word 'I.'

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.

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

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

Our greatest stupidities may be very wise.

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

The common behavior of mankind is the system of reference by means of which we interpret an unknown language.

Idealism leads to realism if it is strictly thought out.

The real question of life after death isn't whether or not it exists, but even if it does what problem this really solves.

An inner process stands in need of outward criteria.

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

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

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.

The logic of the world is prior to all truth and falsehood.

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

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

Man has to awaken to wonder - and so perhaps do peoples. Science is a way of sending him to sleep again.

For a truly religious man nothing is tragic.

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

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

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

If people did not sometimes do silly things nothing intelligent would ever get done.

Language disguises thought.

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

There are remarks that sow and remarks that reap.

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.

The mystical is not how the world is, but that it is.

Resting on your laurels is as dangerous as resting when you are walking in the snow. You doze off and die in your sleep.

Only let's cut out the transcendental twaddle when the whole thing is as plain as a sock on the jaw.

One often makes a remark and only later sees how true it is.

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.'

Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.

Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.

A confession has to be part of your new life.

A logical picture of facts is a thought.

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."

If we spoke a different language we would perceive a somewhat different world.

The Sabbath is not simply a time to rest, to recuperate. We should look at our work from the outside, not just from within.

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.

When one is frightened of the truth then it is never the whole truth that one has an inkling of.

Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination.

Man is fulfilling the purpose of existence who no longer needs to have any purpose except to live. That is to say, who is content.

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

You learned the concept 'pain' when you learned language.

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.

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

At the core of all well-founded belief lies belief that is unfounded.

Think of the tools in a tool-box: there is a hammer, pliers, a saw, a screwdriver, a rule, a glue-pot, nails and screws.--The function of words are as diverse as the functions of these objects.

Telling someone something he does not understand is pointless, even if you add that he will not be able to understand it.

Knowledge is in the end based on acknowledgement.

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

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

One must always be prepared to learn something totally new.

A new word is like a fresh seed sown on the ground of the discussion.

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

A picture is a fact.

If people did not do silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done.

What can be shown, cannot be said.

The world is independent of my will.

The riddle does not exist. If a question can be put at all, then it can also be answered.

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

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

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.

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.

At the end of reasons comes persuasion.

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 face is the soul of the body.

A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door thats unlocked and opens inwards as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push.

Language is a part of our organism and no less complicated than it.

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.

Ethics and aesthetics are one.

The world is the totality of facts, not of things.

A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

If one understands eternity as timelessness, and not as an unending timespan, then whoever lives in the present lives for all time.

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.