Quotes

You must always be puzzled by mental illness. The thing I would dread most, if I became mentally ill, would be your adopting a common sense attitude; that you could take it for granted that I was deluded.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

You get tragedy where the tree, instead of bending, breaks.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

There are remarks that sow and remarks that reap.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

The real discovery is the one which enables me to stop doing philosophy when I want to. The one that gives philosophy peace, so that it is no longer tormented by questions which bring itself into question.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

The logic of the world is prior to all truth and falsehood.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

The limits of my language means the limits of my world.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. All I know is what I have words for.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

The human body is the best picture of the human soul.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Someone who knows too much finds it hard not to lie.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Resting on your laurels is as dangerous as resting when you are walking in the snow. You doze off and die in your sleep.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Philosophy is like trying to open a safe with a combination lock: each little adjustment of the dials seems to achieve nothing, only when everything is in place does the door open.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Our greatest stupidities may be very wise.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

One often makes a remark and only later sees how true it is.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Not every religion has to have St. Augustine's attitude to sex. Why even in our culture marriages are celebrated in a church, everyone present knows what is going to happen that night, but that doesn't prevent it being a religious ceremony.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Never stay up on the barren heights of cleverness, but come down into the green valleys of silliness.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Man has to awaken to wonder - and so perhaps do peoples. Science is a way of sending him to sleep again.

Ludwig Wittgenstein