Quotes About Philosophy

The solution of logical problems must be neat for they set the standard of neatness.

But some of the greatest achievements in philosophy could only be compared with taking up some books which seemed to belong together, and putting them on different shelves; nothing more being final about their positions than that they no longer lie side by side. The onlooker who doesn't know the difficulty of the task might well think in such a case that nothing at all had been achieved.

Most propositions and questions, that have been written about philosophical matters, are not false, but senseless. ... (They are of the same kind as the question whether the Good is more or less identical than the Beautiful.)

There is no such thing as an isolated proposition. For what I call a proposition is a position in the game of language.

At the foundation of well-founded belief lies belief that is not founded.

Philosophy limits the disputable sphere of natural science.

The book deals with the problems of philosophy and shows, as I believe, that the method of formulating these problems rests on the misunderstanding of the logic of our language.

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

A right-hand glove could be put on the left hand if it could be turned round in four-dimensional space.

In practice, language is always more or less vague, so that what we assert is never quite precise.

When I am furious about something, I sometimes beat the ground or a tree with my walking stick. But I certainly do not believe that the ground is to blame or that my beating can help anything... And all rites are of this kind.

5.641 [...] Das philosophische Ich ist nicht der Mensch, nicht der menschliche Körper, oder die menschliche Seele, von der die Psychologie handelt, sondern das metaphysische Subjekt, die Grenze - nicht ein Teil - der Welt.

Es ist offenbar, dass auch eine von der wirklichen noch so verschieden gedachte Welt Etwas -- eine Form -- mit der wirklichen gemein haben muss.

We never arrive at fundamental propositions in the course of our investigation; we get to the boundary of language which stops us from asking further questions. We don't get to the bottom of things, but reach a point where we can go no further, where we cannot ask further questions.

It is obvious that an imagined world, however different it may be from the real one, must have something - a form - in common with it.

Philosophy should make clear and delimit sharply the thoughts which otherwise are, as it were, opaque and blurred.

The man who said that one cannot step into the same river twice said something wrong; one can step into the same river twice.

But doesn't it come out here that knowledge is related to a decision?

To imagine a language means to imagine a form of life.

It used to be said that God could create anything except what would be contrary to the laws of logic. The truth is that we could not say what an illogical world would look like.

Any serious philosophy can be described entirely through jokes.

The limits of my language means the limit of my world

It is humiliating to have to appear like an empty tube which is simply inflated by a mind.

6.4311 Der Tod ist kein Ereignis des Lebens. Den Tod erlebt man nicht. Wenn man unter Ewigkeit nicht unendliche Zeitdauer, sondern Unzeitlichkeit versteht, dann lebt der ewig, der in der Gegenwart lebt.