Quotes By Ludwig Wittgenstein

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

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

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

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

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

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.

The world is independent of my will.

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

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

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.

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.

Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.

There are remarks that sow and remarks that reap.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

What can be shown, cannot be said.

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.

Knowledge is in the end based on acknowledgement.

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

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

Our greatest stupidities may be very wise.

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