Quotes from Ludwig Wittgenstein

the conditions for sense rather than nonsense in combinations of symbols;

2.22 What a picture represents it represents independently of its truth or falsity, by means of its pictorial form.

Not how the world is, is the mystical, but that it is.

Don't treat your common sense like an umbrella. When you come into a room to philosophize, don't leave it outside but bring it in with you.

We say of a proof that it convinces us of a logical law.—But of course a proof starts somewhere. And the point is: What convinces us of the primitive propositions on which the proof is based? Here there is no proof.

Unsere Zivilisation ist durch das Wort Fortschritt charakterisiert. Der Fortschritt ist ihre Form nicht eine ihrer Eigenschaften daß sie fortschrietet. Sie ist typisch aufbauend. Ihre Tätigkeit ist es ein immer komplizierteres Gebilde zu konstruieren. Und auch die Klarheit dient doch nur wieder diesem Zweck und ist nicht Selbstzweck. Mir dagegen ist die Klarheit, die Durchsichtigkeit, Selbstzweck.

The sense of a truth-function of p is a function of the sense of p.   Denial, logical addition, logical multiplication, etc. etc., are operations.   (Denial reverses the sense of a proposition.)

The older I grow, the more I realize how terribly difficult it is for people to understand each other, and I think that what misleads one is the fact that they all look so much like each other. If some people looked like elephants and others like cats, or fish, one wouldn't expect them to understand each other and things would look much more like what they really are.

Contradiction is the external limit of the propositions, tautology their substanceless centre.

If we surrender the reins to language and not to life , then the problems of philosophy arise.

471. It is so difficult to find the beginning. Or, better: it is difficult to begin and the beginning. And not try to go further back.

The philosopher treats a question; like an illness.

Il senso della vita, cioè il senso del mondo, possiamo chiamarlo Dio. Pregare è pensare al senso della vita.

That ?, ?, etc., are not relations in the sense of right and left, etc., is obvious.

471. It is so difficult to find the beginning. Or, better: it is difficult to begin at the beginning. And not try to go further back.

383. The argument I may be dreaming is senseless for this reason: if I am dreaming, this remark is being dreamed as well - and indeed it is also being dreamed that these words have any meaning.

There are men who are too fragile to shatter. I belong to them too.

476. Children do not learn that books exist, that armchairs exist, etc. etc., - they learn to fetch books, sit in armchairs, etc. etc.

The limit of language is shown by its being impossible to describe the fact which corresponds to (is the translation of) a sentence, without simply repeating the sentence.

Cada mañana hay que atravesar de nuevo la escoria muerta, para llegar al núcleo vivo y cálido.

Logic precedes every experience—that something is so.

Either my piece is a work of the highest rank, or it is not a work of the highest rank. In the latter (and more probable) case I myself am in favour of it not being printed. And in the former case it's a matter of indifference whether it's printed twenty or a hundred years sooner or later. After all, who asks whether the Critique of Pure Reason, for example, was written in 17x or y.

Toda mi tendencia, y creo que la tendencia de todos los humanos que han tratado alguna vez de hablar o escribir sobre ética y religión, llevaba a estrellarnos contra los límites del lenguaje. Esta carrera contra los muros de nuestra jaula es algo perfecta y absolutamente sin esperanza.

Say what you choose, so long as it does not prevent you from seeing the facts. (And when you see them there is a good deal that you will not say.)