Quotes from Ludwig Wittgenstein

Roughly speaking: objects are colourless

Superstition is the belief in the causal nexus.

Everything ritualistic must be strictly avoided, because it immediately turns rotten. Of course a kiss is a ritual too and it isn't rotten, but ritual is permissible only to the extent that it is as genuine as a kiss.

If, for example, you were to think more deeply about death, then it would be truly strange if, in doing so, you did not encounter new images, new linguistic fields.

There are two godheads: the world and my independent I. I am either happy or unhappy, that is all. It can be said: good or evil do not exist. A man who is happy must have no fear. Not even in the face of death. Only a man who lives not in time but in the present is happy.

Philosophy is not a body of doctrine but an activity.

The agreement or disagreement or its sense with reality constitutes its truth or falsity.

A confession has to be part of your new life.

That of which we cannot speak, we must pass over in silence

The sole remaining task for philosophy is the analysis of language.

The limits of your language are the limits of your world.

Philosophy may in no way interfere with the actual use of language; it can in the end only describe it. For it cannot give any foundation either. It leaves everything as it is.

The philosophical I is not the man, not the human body or the human soul of which psychology treats, but the metaphysical subject, the limit - not a part of the world.

deep inside me there's a perpetual seething, like the bottom of a geyser, and I keep hoping that things will come to an eruption once and for all, so that I can turn into a different person.

At the basis of the whole modern view of the world lies the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena. So people stop short at natural laws as at something unassailable, as did the ancients at God and Fate. And they both are right and wrong. But the ancients were clearer, in so far as they recognized one clear conclusion, whereas in the modern system it should appear as though everything were explained.

Bad philosophers are like slum landlords. It's my job to put them out of business.

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

Genius is talent exercised with courage.

All numbers in logic must be capable of justification.   Or rather it must become plain that there are no numbers in logic.   There are no pre-eminent numbers.

No one can think a thought for me in the way that no one can don my hat for me.

Religion as madness is a madness springing from irreligiousness.

Well, God has arrived. I met him on the 5.15 train ~ Keynes

For remember that in general we don't use language according to strict rules-- it hasn't been taught to us by means of strict rules, either. We, in our discussions on the other hand, constantly compare language with a calculus preceding to exact rules.

In this sort of predicament, always ask yourself: How did we learn the meaning of this word (good, for instance)? From what sort of examples? In what language-games? Then it will be easier for you to see that the word must have a family of meanings.