Quotes About Logic

The "experience" which we need to understand logic is not that such and such is the case, but that something is; but that is no experience.   Logic precedes every experience—that something is so.   It is before the How, not before the What.

Perhaps you regard this thinking about myself as a waste of time - but how can I be a logician before I'm a human being! Far the most important thing is to settle accounts with myself!

My aim is: to teach you to pass from a piece of disguised nonsense to something that is patent nonsense.

The same operation which makes "q" from "p", makes "r" from "q", and so on. This can only be expressed by the fact that "p", "q", "r", etc., are variables which give general expression to certain formal relations.

Let us not forget this: when 'I raise my arm', my arm goes up. And the problem arises: what is left over if I subtract the fact that my arm goes up from the fact that I raise my arm?

A particular method of symbolizing may be unimportant, but it is always important that this is a possible method of symbolizing. And this happens as a rule in philosophy: The single thing proves over and over again to be unimportant, but the possibility of every single thing reveals something about the nature of the world.

Logical research means the investigation of all regularity. And outside logic all is accident.

Das Spiel des Zweifelns selbst setzt schon die Gewißheit voraus.

What the names signify must be indestructible; for it must be possible to receive a state of affairs in which everything destructible is destroyed. And this description will contain words; and what corresponds to these cannot be destroyed, for otherwise the words would have no meaning. I must not saw off the branch on which I am sitting.

Die Logik muss für sich selber sorgen

Most propositions and questions, that have been written about philosophical matters, are not false, but senseless. We cannot, therefore, answer questions of this kind at all, but only state their senselessness. Most questions and propositions of the philosophers result from the fact that we do not understand the logic of our language.

The object of philosophy is the logical clarification of thoughts.   Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.   A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations.   The result of philosophy is not a number of "philosophical propositions", but to make propositions clear.   Philosophy should make clear and delimit sharply the thoughts which otherwise are, as it were, opaque and blurred.

The object of philosophy is the logical clarification of thoughts. Philosophy is not a theory but an activity. A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations. The result of philosophy is not a number of "philosophical propositions", but to make propositions clear. Philosophy should make clear and delimit sharply the thoughts which otherwise are, as it were, opaque and blurred.

The gramophone record, the musical thought, the score, the waves of sound, all stand to one another in that pictorial internal relation which holds between language and the world. To all of them the logical structure is common. (Like the two youths, their two horses and their lilies in the story. They are all in a certain sense one) (4.014). The possibility of a proposition representing a fact rests upon the fact that in it objects are represented by signs.

Mathematical logic has completely deformed the thinking of mathematicians and philosophers.

That which has to be in common between the sentence and the fact cannot, so he contends, be itself in turn said in language. It can, in his phraseology, only be shown, not said, for whatever we may say will still

Most propositions and questions that have been written about philosophical matters are not false but senseless.

If Ave say Plato loves Socrates, the word loves which occurs between the word Plato and the word Socrates establishes a certain relation between these two words, and it is owing to this fact that our sentence is able to assert a relation between the person's name by the words Plato and Socrates. We must not say, the complex sign ' a R b' says 'a stands in a certain relation R to b' ; but we must say, that ' a' stands in a certain relation to 'b' says that a R b (3.1432)• Mr

The object of philosophy is the logical clarification of thoughts. Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.

Die Probleme werden gelöst, nicht durch Beibringen neuer Erfahrung, sondern durch Zusammenstellung des längst Bekannten. Die Philosophie ist ein Kampf gegen die Verhexung unsres Verstandes durch die Mittel unserer Sprache.

Philosophy aims at the logical clarification of thoughts. Philosophy is not a body of doctrine but an activity.

The object of philosophy is the logical clarification of thoughts. Philosophy is not a theory but an activity. A

There is not a single philosophical method, though there are indeed methods, different therapies, as it were.

I conceive the proposition—like Frege and Russell—as a function of the expressions contained in it.