Quotes from Ludwig Wittgenstein

It is difficult to describe paths of thought where there are already many paths laid down, and not fall into one of the grooves

IfI wanted to eat an apple, and someone punched me in the stomach, taking away my appetite, then it was this punch that I originally wanted

Philosophy] must set limits to what can be thought; and, in doing so, to what cannot be thought. It must set limits to what cannot be thought by working outwards through what can be thought.

I want to say: We use judgements as principlesof judegement.

The fact that we cannot write down all the digits of pi is not a human shortcoming, as mathematicians sometimes think.

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

What is good is also divine. Queer as it sounds, that sums up my ethics. Only something supernatural can express the Supernatural.

Philosophy ought really to be written only as a form of poetry.

Indeed how might it be if things revealed their colors only when (in our terms) no light fell on them - if, for example, the sky were black? Could we not then say, only by black light do they appear to us in their full colors?

Reading the Socratic dialogues one has the feeling: what a frightful waste of time! What's the point of these arguments that prove nothing and clarify nothing?

Philosophers often behave like little children who scribble some marks on a piece of paper at random and then ask the grown-up What's that? - It happened like this: the grown-up had drawn pictures for the child several times and said: this is a man, this is a house, etc. And then the child makes some marks too and asks: what's this then?

A picture of a complete apple tree, however accurate, is in a certain sense much less like the tree itself than is a little daisy.

Es ist ein seltsamer Zufall, dass alle die Menschen, deren Schädel man geöffnet hat, ein Gehirn hatten.

The mechanism which we don't understand is not anything in our soul, but rather that of the life of this expression.

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

Only let's cut out the transcendental twaddle when the whole thing is as plain as a sock on the jaw.

Philosophical problems can be compared to locks on safes, which can be opened by dialing a certain word or number, so that no force can open the door until just this word has been hit upon, and once it is hit upon any child can open it.

Nothing in the visual field allows you to infer that it is seen by an eye.

For philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday.

The atmosphere surrounding this problem is terrible. Dense clouds of language lie about the crucial point. It is almost impossible to get through to it.

Just be indipendent of the external world, so you don't have to fear for what's in it.

Conscience is the voice of God.

Science and industry, and their progress, might turn out to be the most enduring thing in the modern world. Perhaps any speculation about a coming collapse of science and industry is, for the present and for a long time to come, nothing but a dream; perhaps science and industry, having caused infinite misery in the process, will unite the world - I mean condense it into a single unit, though one in which peace is the last thing that will find a home.

A philosopher who is not taking part in discussions is like a boxer who never goes into the ring.