Ludwig Wittgenstein Quotes - Page 7

What Copernicus really achieved was not the discovery of a true theory but of a fertile new point of view.

Proof, one might say, does not merely shew that it is like this, but: how it is like this. It shows how 13+14 yield 27.

It seems to me that, in every culture, I come across a chapter headed 'Wisdom.' And then I know exactly what is going to follow: 'Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.'

Philosophy hasn't made any progress? - If somebody scratches the spot where he has an itch, do we have to see some progress? Isn't genuine scratching otherwise, or genuine itching itching? And can't this reaction to an irritation continue in the same way for a long time before a cure for the itching is discovered?

Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death.

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

Philosophy is not a body of doctrine but an activity. ...Without philosophy thoughts are, as it were, cloudy and indistinct: its task is to make them clear and to give them sharp boundaries.

The wish precedes the event, the will accompanies it.

Don't ask what it means, but rather how it is used.

Talent is a spring from which fresh water always flows.- But this spring is worthless if no good use is made of it.

I am sitting with a philosopher in the garden; he says again and again 'I know that that’s a tree', pointing to a tree that is near us. Someone else arrives and hears this, and I tell him: 'This fellow isn’t insane. We are only doing philosophy.

Philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday

Is it even always an advantage to replace an indistinct picture by a sharp one? Isn't the indistinct one often what we need?

Because our goals are not lofty but illusory, our problems are not difficult, but nonsensical.

The philosopher is not a citizen of any community of ideas, that is what makes him a philosopher.

If life becomes hard to bear we think of a change in our circumstances. But the most important and effective change, a change in our own attitude, hardly even occurs to us, and the resolution to take such a step is very difficult for us.

The solution to the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of this problem.

Language disguises the thought; so that from the external form of the clothes one cannot infer the form of the thought they clothe, because the external form of the clothes is constructed with quite another object than to let the form of the body be recognized.

Most of the propositions and questions to be found in philosophical works are not false but nonsensical.

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.

A philosopher who is not taking part in discussions is like a boxer who never goes into the ring.

6.4311 Der Tod ist kein Ereignis des Lebens. Den Tod erlebt man nicht. Wenn man unter Ewigkeit nicht unendliche Zeitdauer, sondern Unzeitlichkeit versteht, dann lebt der ewig, der in der Gegenwart lebt. Unser Leben ist ebenso endlos, wie unser Gesichtsfeld grenzenlos ist. 6.4311 Death is not an event of life. Death is not lived through. If by eternity is understood not endless temporal duration but timelessness, then he lives eternally who lives in the present. Our life is endless in the way that our visual field is without limit.

The child learns to believe a host of things. I.e. it learns to act according to these beliefs. Bit by bit there forms a system of what is believed, and in that system some things stand unshakeably fast and some are more or less liable to shift. What stands fast does so, not because it is intrinsically obvious or convincing; it is rather held fast by what lies around it.

Suppose someone were to say: 'Imagine this butterfly exactly as it is, but ugly instead of beautiful'?!

I won't say 'See you tomorrow' because that would be like predicting the future, and I'm pretty sure I can't do that.