Quotes from Ludwig Wittgenstein

What we find in philosophy is trivial; it does not teach us new facts, only science does that. But the proper synopsis of these trivialities is enormously difficult, and has immense importance. Philosophy is in fact the synopsis of trivialities.

T]he enigma of the continuum arises because language misleads us into applying to it a picture that doesn't fit. Set theory preserves the inappropriate picture of something discontinuous, but makes statements about it that contradict the picture, under the impression that it is breaking with prejudices; whereas what should really have been done is to point out that the picture just doesn't fit…

What we can't say we can't say, and we can't whistle it either.

We feel as if we had to penetrate phenomena: our investigation, however, is directed not towards phenomena, but, as one might say, towards the 'possibilities' of phenomena.

El disco gramofónico, el pensamiento musical, la notación musical, las ondas sonoras, están todos entre sí en esa relación interna figurativa que se da entre lenguaje y mundo.

Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.

Another alternative would have been to give you what's called a popular-scientific lecture, that is a lecture intended to make you believe that you understand a thing which actually you don't understand, and to gratify what I believe to be on of the lowest desires of modern people, namely the superficial curiosity about the latest discoveries of science.

How far my efforts agree with those of other philosophers I will not decide. Indeed what I have here written makes no claim to novelty in points of detail; and therefore I give no sources, because it is indifferent to me whether what I have thought has already been thought before me by another.

Los limites de mi lenguaje son los limites de mi mundo

What the names signify must be indestructible; for it must be possible to receive a state of affairs in which everything destructible is destroyed. And this description will contain words; and what corresponds to these cannot be destroyed, for otherwise the words would have no meaning. I must not saw off the branch on which I am sitting.

He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it

I don't believe I have ever invented a line of thinking, I have always taken one over from someone else. I have simply straightaway seized on it with enthusiasm for my work of clarification. That is how Boltzmann, Hertz, Schopenhauer, Frege, Russell, Kraus, Loos, Weininger, Spengler, Sraffa have influenced me.

Suppose that the colour struck you as brighter on one day than on another; would you sometimes say: I must be wrong, that colour is certainly the same as yesterday? This shews that we do not always resort to what memory tells us as the verdict of the highest court of appeal.

610. Kahvenin kokusunu betimle!- Neden olmuyor? Sözcüklerimiz mi yetersiz? Ne için yetersiz peki? - Ama böyle bir betimlemenin yine de olanakl? olmas? gerektiÄŸi düÅŸüncesi nereden geliyor? Böyle bir betimin eksikliÄŸini duydun mu hiç? Bu kokuyu betimlemeyi deneyip baÅŸaramad???n oldu mu?

Die Logik muss für sich selber sorgen

What can be described can happen too: and what the law of causality is meant to exclude cannot even be described.

O ?em není možno mluvit, o tom se musí ml?et.

I believe it might interest a philosopher, one who can think himself, to read my notes. For even if I have hit the mark only rarely, he would recognize what targets I had been ceaselessly aiming at.

I ought to have ... become a star in the sky. Instead of which I have remained stuck on earth.

If a person tells me he has been to the worst places I have no reason to judge him; but if he tells me it was his superior wisdom that enabled him to go there, then I know he is a fraud.

Most propositions and questions, that have been written about philosophical matters, are not false, but senseless. We cannot, therefore, answer questions of this kind at all, but only state their senselessness. Most questions and propositions of the philosophers result from the fact that we do not understand the logic of our language.

The solution of the riddle of life in space and time lies outside space and time.

That I am a man and not a woman can be verified, but if I were to say I was a woman, and then tried to explain the error by saying I hadn't checked the statement, the explanation would not be accepted.

6.4321 The facts all contribute only to setting the problem, not to its solution. 6.44 It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists. 6.45 To view the world sub specie aeterni is to view it as a whole - a limited whole. Feeling the world as a limited whole - it is this that is mystical.