Ludwig Wittgenstein
A propositional sign, applied and thought out, is a thought. A thought is a proposition with a sense.Collection: Thoughtful
If, for example, you were to think more deeply about death, then it would be truly strange if, in so doing, you did not encounter new images.Collection: Thinking
What signs fail to express, their application shows. What signs slur over, their application says clearly.Collection: Failing
If there were a verb meaning "to believe falsely," it would not have any significant first person, present indicative.Collection: Believe
There is not a philosophical method, though there are indeed methods, like different therapies.Collection: Philosophical
The truth of the thoughts that are here set forth seems to me unassailable and definitive. I therefore believe myself to have found, on all essential points, the final solution of the problems. And if I am not mistaken in this belief, then the second thing in which the value of this work consists is that it shows how little is achieved when these problems are solved.Collection: Believe
What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.Collection: Silence
No one likes having offended another person; hence everyone feels so much better if the other person doesn't show he's been offended. Nobody likes being confronted by a wounded spaniel. Remember that. It is much easier patiently - and tolerantly - to avoid the person you have injured than to approach him as a friend. You need courage for that.Collection: Friendship
I am not interested in constructing a building, so much as in having a perspicuous view of the foundations of possible buildings.Collection: Views
What is left over if I subtract the fact that my arms goes up from the fact that I raise my arm?Collection: Psychology
What has to be accepted, the given, is - so one could say - forms of life .Collection: Accepted
Genius is talent in which character makes itself heard.Collection: Character
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.Collection: Believe
For remember that in general we don't use language according to strict rules-- it hasn't been taught to us by means of strict rules, either. We, in our discussions on the other hand, constantly compare language with a calculus preceding to exact rules.Collection: Mean
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.Collection: Children
A picture whose pictorial form is logical form is called a logical picture.Collection: Logic
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.Collection: Philosophy
We just do not see how very specialized the use of "I know" is.Collection: Knowledge
No one can think a thought for me in the way that no one can don my hat for me.Collection: Thinking
If you want to go down deep you do not need to travel far; indeed, you don't have to leave your most immediate and familiar surroundings.Collection: Needs
Philosophy aims at the logical clarification of thoughts. Philosophy is not a body of doctrine but an activity. A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations.Collection: Philosophy
Suppose someone follows the series "1,3,5,7, ..", and in writing the series 2x+1; and he asked himself "But am I always doing the same thing, or something different every time?" If from one day to the next someone promises: "Tomorrow I will give up smoking", does he say the same thing every day, or every day something different?Collection: Giving Up
You must always be puzzled by mental illness. The thing I would dread most, if I became mentally ill, would be your adopting a common sense attitude; that you could take it for granted that I was deluded.Collection: Funny
A proposition is completely logically analyzed if its grammar is made completely clear: no matter what idiom it may be written or expressed in.Collection: May
If suicide is allowed then everything is allowed. If anything is not allowed then suicide is not allowed. This throws a light on the nature of ethics, for suicide is, so to speak, the elementary sin. And when one investigates it it is like investigating mercury vapour in order to comprehend the nature of vapours.Collection: Suicide
All philosophy is a 'critique of language' (though not in Mauthner's sense). It was Russell who performed the service of showing that the apparent logical form of a proposition need not be its real one.Collection: Philosophy
Humor is not a mood but a way of looking at the world.Collection: Humor
There can never be surprises in logic.Collection: Math
With my full philosophical rucksack I can only climb slowly up the mountain of mathematics.Collection: Philosophical
If a false thought is so much as expressed boldly and clearly, a great deal has already been gained.Collection: Deals
I am showing my pupils details of an immense landscape which they cannot possibly know their way around.Collection: Details
"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.Collection: Arrows
A philosopher always finds more grass to feed upon in the valleys of stupidity than on the arid heights of intelligence.Collection: Stupidity
Sometimes, in doing philosophy, one just wants to utter an inarticulate sound.Collection: Philosophy
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.Collection: Thinking
If I have exhausted the justifications, I have reached bedrock and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say: 'This is simply what I do.Collection: Exhausted
You can't be reluctant to give up your lie and still tell the truth.Collection: Giving Up
That which cannot be said must not be said. That which cannot be said, one must be silent thereof.Collection: Silent
We could present spatially an atomic fact which contradicted the laws of physics, but not one which contradicted the laws of geometry.Collection: Math
Just be indipendent of the external world, so you don't have to fear for what's in it.Collection: World
Frazer is much more savage than most of his savages, for they are not as far removed from the understanding of spiritual matter as a twentieth-century Englishman. His explanations of primitive practices are much cruder than the meaning of these practices themselves.Collection: Spiritual
Black seems to make a colour cloudy, but darkness doesn't. A ruby could thus keep getting darker without ever becoming cloudy; but if it became blackish red, it would become cloudy.Collection: Darkness
Golden is a surface colour.Collection: Golden
One age misunderstands another; and a petty age misunderstands all the others in its own ugly way.Collection: Age
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.Collection: Philosophical
Only let's cut out the transcendental twaddle when the whole thing is as plain as a sock on the jaw.Collection: Cutting
I don’t know why we are here, but I’m pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.Collection: Sarcastic
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.Collection: Moving Forward
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.Collection: Firsts