Quotes from John Heaton

Wittgenstein sent the Tractatus to several publishers who rejected it, including his own university press — Cambridge, which was to distinguish itself by rejecting all his writing.

Facts are in logical space and independent of one another and can only be stated or asserted.

Whereas things exist, are in space and time and have properties such as hardness, colour, etc.

He had an early formulation of what in the Tractatus he saw more clearly — that we can speak of existence only when we assert the truth of some proposition that is not itself existential.

Philosophy should take thoughts that are otherwise turbid and blurred, so to speak, and make them clear and sharp.

At the age of fourteen, he was sent to a rather unacademic school at Linz. Adolf Hitler, who was almost exactly the same age as Ludwig, was also there.

So Wittgenstein went to Trinity College, Cambridge, to study under Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) who was a lecturer in mathematical logic. This was to lead to a passionate intellectual friendship between these two great philosophers in which both were transformed.