Quotes About Interpretation

We are struggling with language. We are engaged in a struggle with language.

the meaning of a word is its use in the language.

An entire mythology is stored within our language.

a nothing will serve just as well as a something about which nothing could be said.

It is not humanly possible to gather immediately from it what the logic of language is. Language disguises thought.

If we spoke a different language, we would perceive a somewhat different world.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

This book will perhaps only be understood by those who have themselves already thought the thoughts which are expressed in it-or similar thoughts. It is therefore not a text-book. Its object would be attained if it afforded pleasure to one who read it with understanding.

We regard the photograph, the picture on our wall, as the object itself (the man, landscape, and so on) depicted there. This need not have been so. We could easily imagine people who did not have this relation to such pictures. Who, for example, would be repelled by photographs, because a face without color and even perhaps a face in reduced proportions struck them as inhuman.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.