Ludwig Wittgenstein quotes - page 5

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. (Ludwig Wittgenstein)
If a false thought is so much as expressed boldly and clearly, a great deal has already been gained.
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
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.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
An entire mythology is stored within our language.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Nothing is more important than the formation of fictional concepts, which teach us at last to understand our own.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
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.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Philosophy may in no way interfere with the actual use of language; it can in the end only describe it.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
So we do sometimes think because it has been found to pay.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
If God had looked into our minds he would not have been able to see there whom we were speaking of.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
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. (Ludwig Wittgenstein)
It's only by thinking even more crazily than philosophers do that you can solve their problems.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Logic is not a body of doctrine, but a mirror-image of the world. Logic is transcendental.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
The world is independent of my will.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
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.
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
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.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
If you do know that here is one hand, we'll grant you all the rest.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
One might say: Genius is talent exercised with courage.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
You can't be reluctant to give up your lie and still tell the truth. (Ludwig Wittgenstein)
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.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
To imagine a language is to imagine a form of life.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
If in life we are surrounded by death, then in the health of our intellect we are surrounded by madness.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
The real question of life after death isn't whether or not it exists, but even if it does what problem this really solves.
Ludwig Wittgenstein