Quotes from Ludwig Wittgenstein

The limits of your world are the limits of your language

The logic of the world which the propositions of logic show in tautologies, mathematics shows in equations.

The basic evil of Russell's logic, as also of mine in the Tractatus, is that what a proposition is is illustrated by a few commonplace examples, and then presupposed as understood in full generality.

If suicide is allowed then everything is allowed. If anything is not allowed then suicide is not allowed. This throws a light on the nature of ethics, for suicide is, so to speak, the elementary sin. And when one investigates it, it is like investigating mercury vapor in order to comprehend the nature of vapors.

A good objection helps one forward, a shallow objection, even if it is valid, is wearisome. ... The objection does not seize the matter by its root, where the life is, but so far outside that nothing can be rectified even if it is wrong. A good objection helps directly towards a solution, a shallow one must first be overcome and can, from then on, be left to one side. Just as a tree bends at a knot in the trunk in order to grow on.

Mathematics is a method of logic.

You could attach prices to thoughts. Some cost a lot, some a little. And how does one pay for thoughts? The answer, I think, is: with courage.

One cannot reasonably be angry even at Hitler, let alone at God.

The war has saved my life.

The only life that is happy is the life that can renounce the amenities of the world. To it the amenities of the world are so many graces of fate.

It's impossible for me to say one word about all that music has meant to me in my life. How, then, can I hope to be understood?

Our greatest stupidities may be very wise.

A man's thinking goes on within his consciousness in a seclusion in comparison with which any physical seclusion is an exhibition to public view.

Propositions show what they say: tautologies and contradictions show that they say nothing.

Like everything metaphysical the harmony between thought and reality is to be found in the grammar of the language.

This is how philosophers should salute each other: 'Take your time.

If in life we are surrounded by death, so too in the health of our intellect by madness.

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

What has to be accepted, the given, is - so one could say - forms of life .

A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards; as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push.

A new word is like a fresh seed sown on the ground of the discussion.

One of the most misleading representational techniques in our language is the use of the word 'I.'

Only a man who lives not in time but in the present is happy.

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.'