Ludwig Wittgenstein quotes - page 6

If you and I are to live religious lives, it mustn't be that we talk a lot about religion, but that our manner of life is different. It is my belief that only if you try to be helpful to other people will you in the end find your way to God. (Ludwig Wittgenstein)
For an answer which cannot be expressed the question too cannot be expressed. The riddle does not exist. If a question can be put at all, then it can also be answered.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Don't think, but look! (PI 66)
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
This sort of thing has got to be stopped. Bad philosophers are like slum landlords. It's my job to put them out of business.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
It's impossible for me to say one word about all that music has meant to me in my life. How, then, can I hope to be understood?
Ludwig Wittgenstein
I would really like to slow down the speed of reading with continual punctuation marks. For I would like to be read slowly.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
310. A pupil and a teacher. The pupil will not let anything be explained to him, for he continually interrupts with doubts, for instance as to the existence of things, the meaning for words, etc. The teacher says "Stop interrupting me and do as I tell you. So far your doubts don't make sense at all."
Ludwig Wittgenstein
The meaning of a question is the method of answering it: then what is the meaning of 'Do two men really mean the same by the word "white"?' Tell me how you are searching, and I will tell you what you are searching for.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
You always hear people say that philosophy makes no progress and that the same philosophical problems which were already preoccupying the Greeks are still troubling us today. But people who say that do not understand the reason why it has to be so. The reason is that our language has remained the same and always introduces us to the same questions.... I read: "philosophers are no nearer to the meaning of 'Reality' than Plato got,...". What a strange situation. How extraordinary that Plato could have got even as far as he did! Or that we could not get any further! Was it because Plato was so extremely clever?
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)
What is the case, the fact, is the existence of atomic facts.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
You won't - I really believe - get too much out of reading it. Because you won't understand it; the content will seem strange to you. In reality, it isn't strange to you, for the point is ethical. I once wanted to give a few words in the foreword which now actually are not in it, which, however, I'll write to you now because they might be a key for you: I wanted to write that my work consists of two parts: of the one which is here, and of everything which I have not written. And precisely this second part is the important one.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Why in the world shouldn't they have regarded with awe and reverence that act by which the human race is perpetuated. 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
Though a state of affairs that would contravene the laws of physics can be represented by us spatially, one that would contravene the laws of geometry cannot.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
One of the most difficult of the philosopher's tasks is to find out where the shoe pinches.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
If I cannot say a priori what elementary propositions there are, then the attempt to do so must lead to obvious nonsense.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
To obey a rule, to make a report, to give an order, to play a game of chess, are customs.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
When we can't think for ourselves, we can always quote.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
The eternal life is given to those who live in the present.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Logic pervades the world: the limits of the world are also its limits. (Ludwig Wittgenstein)
We feel that even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Not how the world is, but that it is, is the mystery.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Philosophy aims at the logical clarification of thoughts. Philosophy is not a body of doctrine but an activity.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
The purely corporeal can be uncanny. Compare the way angels and devils are portrayed. So-called "miracles" must be connected with this. A miracle must be, as it were, a sacred gesture.
Ludwig Wittgenstein