Ludwig Wittgenstein Quotes

A proposition is completely logically analyzed if its grammar is made completely clear: no matter what idiom it may be written or expressed in...

A main source of our failure to understand is that we don’t have an overview of the use of our words. – Our grammar is deficient in surveyability. A surveyable representation produces precisely that kind of understanding which consists in ‘seeing connections’. …
The concept of a surveyable representation is of fundamental significance for us. It characterizes the way we represent things, how we look at matters. (Is this a ‘Weltanschauung’?)

In order to know an object, I must know not its external but all its internal qualities.

I really do think with my pen, because my head often knows nothing about what my hand is writing.

The philosopher's treatment of a question is like the treatment of an illness.

we cannot think of any object apart from the possibility of its connexion with other things.

La soluzione del problema che tu vedi nella vita è un modo di vivere che fa scomparire ciò che rappresenta un problema.
Se la vita è problematica è segno che la tua vita non si adatta alla forma della vita. Devi quindi cambiare la tua vita; quando si adatterà alla forma, allora scomparirà ciò che è problematico.

A good guide will take you through the more important streets more often than he takes you down side streets; a bad guide will do the opposite. In philosophy I'm a rather bad guide.

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.

Waltzing is not the same thing as dancing, since the rhumba is also a dance but it is not a waltz. It therefore follows that one can waltz without dancing the waltz.

Perhaps what is inexpressible (what I find mysterious and am not able to express) is the background against which whatever I could express has its meaning.

How could human behaviour be described? Surely only by showing the actions of a variety of humans, as they are all mixed up together. Not what one man is doing now, but the whole hurly-burly, is the background against which we see an action, and it determines our judgment, our concepts, and our reactions.

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

You won't — I really believe — get too much out of reading it. Because you won't understand it; the content will seem strange to you. In reality, it isn't strange to you, for the point is ethical. I once wanted to give a few words in the foreword which now actually are not in it, which, however, I'll write to you now because they might be a key for you: I wanted to write that my work consists of two parts: of the one which is here, and of everything which I have not written. And precisely this second part is the important one.

The less somebody knows and understands himself the less great he is, however great may be his talent. For this reason our scientists are not great.