Quotes About Meaning

Roughly speaking: to say of two things that they are identical is nonsense, and to say of one thing that it is identical with itself is to say nothing.

The work of art is the object seen sub specie aeternitatis; and the good life is the world seen sub specie aeternitatis. This is the connection between art and ethics. The usual way of looking at things sees objects as it were from the midst of them, the view sub specie aeternitatis from outside. In such a way that they have the whole world as background.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

For philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday.

Commenting on his Tractatus...It consists of two parts: the one written here plus all that I have not written. And it is precisely the 2nd part that is the important one.

But all propositions of logic say the same thing. That is, nothing.

11. I am inclined to say: I 'point' in different senses to this body, to its shape, to its colour, etc.--What does that mean? What does it mean to say I 'hear' in a different sense the piano, its sound, the piece, the player, his fluency? I 'marry', in one sense a woman, in another her money.

What I called jottings would not be a rendering of the text, not so to speak a translation with another symbolism. The text would not be stored up in the jottings. And why should it be stored up in our nervous system?

What finds its reflection in language, language cannot represent. What expresses itself in language, we cannot express by means of language.

The work of art is the object seen sub specie aeternitatis [i.e., under the aspect of eternity]; and the good life is the world seen sub specie aeternitatis. This is the connection between art and ethics.

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.

In the middle of a conversation, someone says to me out of the blue: I wish you luck. I am astonished; but later I realize that these words connect up with his thoughts about me. And now they do not strike me as meaningless any more.

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.

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

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

The essential business of language is to assert or deny facts. Given

And nothing is more wrong-headed than calling meaning a mental activity! Unless, that is, one is setting out to produce confusion. (It would also be possible to speak of an activity of butter when it rises in price, and if no problems are produced by this it is harmless.)