Ludwig Wittgenstein Quotes

De filosoof behandelt een vraag zoals men dat met een ziekte doet.

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.

Hegel seems to me to be always wanting to say that things which look different are really the same. Whereas my interest is in showing that things which look the same are really different. I was thinking of using as a motto for my book a quotation from King Lear: 'I’ll teach you differences'.
...
'You’d be surprised' wouldn’t be a bad motto either.

Philosophy ought really to be written only as a form of poetry.

Anything that can be said can be said clearly.

The subject does not belong to the world, but it is a limit of the world. (5.632)

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

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.

If I have exhausted the justifications, I have reached bedrock and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say: 'This is simply what I do.

2.22 What a picture represents it represents independently of its truth or falsity, by means of its pictorial form.

Original German: Die Wahrheit der Tautologie ist gewiss, des Satzes möglich, der Kontradiktion unmöglich

"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?"

Does man think because he has found that thinking pays? Does he bring his children up because he has found it pays?

Los límites de mi lenguaje son los límites de mi mente. Sólo conozco aquello para lo que tengo palabras.

I think one of the things you and I have to learn is that we have to live without the consolation of belonging to a Church....

Of one thing I am certain. The religion of the future will have to be extremely ascetic, and by that I don't mean just going without food and drink.