Quotes from Ludwig Wittgenstein

Anything your reader can do for himself leave to him.

The object of philosophy is the logical clarification of thoughts.   Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.   A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations.   The result of philosophy is not a number of "philosophical propositions", but to make propositions clear.   Philosophy should make clear and delimit sharply the thoughts which otherwise are, as it were, opaque and blurred.

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

The object of philosophy is the logical clarification of thoughts. Philosophy is not a theory but an activity. A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations. The result of philosophy is not a number of "philosophical propositions", but to make propositions clear. Philosophy should make clear and delimit sharply the thoughts which otherwise are, as it were, opaque and blurred.

The solution of the riddle of life in space and time lies outside space and time. (It is certainly not the solution of any problems of natural science that is required).

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.

6.44 : It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists.

The gramophone record, the musical thought, the score, the waves of sound, all stand to one another in that pictorial internal relation which holds between language and the world. To all of them the logical structure is common. (Like the two youths, their two horses and their lilies in the story. They are all in a certain sense one) (4.014). The possibility of a proposition representing a fact rests upon the fact that in it objects are represented by signs.

I should have liked to produce a good book. It has not turned out that way, but the time is past in which I could improve it.

?i pentru gânduri exist? un timp pentru a ara È™i un timp pentru a culege

Mathematical logic has completely deformed the thinking of mathematicians and philosophers.

Man könnte sagen: "Genie ist Mut im Talent.

The limits of my language are the limits of my universe

The essential business of language is to assert or deny facts. Given the syntax of a language, the meaning of a sentence is determinate as soon as the meaning of the component words is known. In order that a certain sentence should assert a certain fact there must, however the language may be constructed, be something in common between the structure of the sentence and the structure of the fact.

In order to make an error, a man must already judge in conformity with mankind.

The world is my world: this is shown by the fact that the limits of language stand for the limits of my world…I am my world.

That which has to be in common between the sentence and the fact cannot, so he contends, be itself in turn said in language. It can, in his phraseology, only be shown, not said, for whatever we may say will still

Most propositions and questions that have been written about philosophical matters are not false but senseless.

To be sure, I can imagine what Heidegger means by being [Sein] and anxiety [Angst]. Man feels the urge to run up against the limits of language. Think for example of the astonishment that anything at all exists. This astonishment cannot be expressed in the form of a question, and there is no answer whatsoever. Anything we might say is a priori bound to be mere nonsense. Nevertheless we do run up against the limits of language.

Man kann vernünftigerweise nicht einmal auf Hitler eine Wut haben, wieviel weniger auf Gott.

Facts which are not compounded of other facts are what Mr Wittgenstein calls Sachverhalle, whereas a fact which may consist of two or more facts is called a Tatsache: thus, for example, Socrates is wise is a Sachverhalt, as well as a Tatsache, whereas Socrates is wise and Plato is his pupil is a Tatsache but not a Sachverhalt. He compares

It was an awful thought to go and sit there among logical positivists ...

If Ave say Plato loves Socrates, the word loves which occurs between the word Plato and the word Socrates establishes a certain relation between these two words, and it is owing to this fact that our sentence is able to assert a relation between the person's name by the words Plato and Socrates. We must not say, the complex sign ' a R b' says 'a stands in a certain relation R to b' ; but we must say, that ' a' stands in a certain relation to 'b' says that a R b (3.1432)• Mr

Wenn man unter Ewigkeit nicht unendliche Zeitdauer, sondern Unzeitlichkeit versteht, dann lebt der ewig, der in der Gegenwart lebt.