Quotes from Ludwig Wittgenstein

The depressed man lives in a depressed world.

If a lion could talk, we could not understand him.

An inner process stands in need of outward criteria.

Man is the microcosm: I am my world.

What is troubling us is the tendency to believe that the mind is like a little man within.

The common behavior of mankind is the system of reference by means of which we interpret an unknown language.

One age misunderstands another; and a petty age misunderstands all the others in its own ugly way.

The popular scientific books by our scientists aren't the outcome of hard work, but are written when they are resting on their laurels.

My work consists of two parts: of the one which is here, and of everything which I have not written. And precisely this second part is the important one.

Language is a part of our organism and no less complicated than it.

It is so characteristic, that just when the mechanics of reproduction are so vastly improved, there are fewer and fewer people who know how the music should be played.

Genius is talent exercised with courage.

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.

The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity

If people never did silly things, then nothing intelligent would ever get done.

If one understands eternity as timelessness, and not as an unending timespan, then whoever lives in the present lives for all time.

With my full philosophical rucksack I can only climb slowly up the mountain of mathematics.

The logic of the world is prior to all truth and falsehood.

When one is frightened of the truth then it is never the whole truth that one has an inkling of.

Philosophy, as we use the word, is a fight against the fascination which forms of expression exert on us.

Humor is not a mood but a way of looking at the world. So if it is correct to say that humor was stamped out in Nazi Germany, that does not mean that people were not in good spirits, or anything of that sort, but something much deeper and more important.

Philosophy may in no way interfere with the actual use of language; it can in the end only describe it…. It leaves everything as it is.

I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.

[M]an is fulfilling the purpose of existence who no longer needs to have any purpose except to live. That is to say, who is content.