Quotes from Ludwig Wittgenstein

I give no sources, because it is indifferent to me whether what I have thought has already been thought before me by another.

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

The world of the happy man is a different one from that of the unhappy man.

A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably.

When you are philosophizing you have to descend into primeval chaos and feel at home there.

Language disguises the thought; so that from the external form of the clothes one cannot infer the form of the thought they clothe, because the external form of the clothes is constructed with quite another object than to let the form of the body be recognized.

You can't think decently if you're not willing to hurt yourself

If you tried to doubt everything you would not get as far as doubting anything. The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty.

Don't think, but look! (PI 66)

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

The mystical is not how the world is, but that it is.

My day passes between logic, whistling, going for walks, and being depressed. I wish to God that I were more intelligent and everything would finally become clear to me - or else that I needn't live much longer.

An honest religious thinker is like a tightrope walker. He almost looks as though he were walking on nothing but air. His support is the slenderest imaginable. And yet it really is possible to walk on it.

Just improve yourself; that is the only thing you can do to better the world.

Sometimes, in doing philosophy, one just wants to utter an inarticulate sound.

Logic takes care of itself; all we have to do is to look and see how it does it.

Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen.

Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly. Everything that can be said can be said clearly.

Philosophers are often like little children, who first scribble random lines on a piece of paper with their pencils, and now ask an adult 'What is that?

The eternal life is given to those who live in the present.

Hegel seems to me to be always wanting to say that things which look different are really the same. Whereas my interest is in showing that things which look the same are really different. I was thinking of using as a motto for my book a quotation from King Lear: 'I'll teach you differences'. ... 'You'd be surprised' wouldn't be a bad motto either.

One often makes a remark and only later sees how true it is.

The philosopher is not a citizen of any community of ideas, that is what makes him a philosopher.

Knowledge is in the end based on acknowledgement.