Ludwig Wittgenstein Quotes - Page 12

Where does our investigation get its importance from, since it seems only to destroy everything interesting, that is, all that is great and important? (As it were all the buildings, leaving behind only bits of stone and rubble.) What we are destroying is nothing but houses of cards and we are clearing up the ground of language on which they stand.

I did not get my picture of the world by satisfying myself of its correctness; nor do I have it because I am satisfied of its correctness. No: it is the inherited background against which I distinguish between true and false.

The feeling of an unbridgeable gulf between consciousness and brain-process:When does this feeling occur in the present case?It is when I (for example) turn my attention in a particular way on to my own consciousness, and, astonished, say to myself: THIS is supposed to be produced by a process in the brain!--as it were clutching my forehead.

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.

I am still at Trattenbach, surrounded, as ever, by odiousness and baseness. I know that human beings on the average are not worth much anywhere, but here they are much more good-for-nothing and irresponsible than elsewhere.

When I obey a rule, I do not choose. I obey the rule blindly .

A propositional sign, applied and thought out, is a thought. A thought is a proposition with a sense.

Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.

What signs fail to express, their application shows. What signs slur over, their application says clearly.

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.

If there were a verb meaning "to believe falsely," it would not have any significant first person, present indicative.

There is not a philosophical method, though there are indeed methods, like different therapies.

What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.

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.

A tautology's truth is certain, a proposition's possible, a contradiction's impossible.

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.

I am not interested in constructing a building, so much as in having a perspicuous view of the foundations of possible buildings.

What is left over if I subtract the fact that my arms goes up from the fact that I raise my arm?

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.

What has to be accepted, the given, is - so one could say - forms of life .

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.

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.

Genius is talent in which character makes itself heard.

A picture whose pictorial form is logical form is called a logical picture.

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.