Ludwig Wittgenstein Quotes

6.44 : It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists.

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

If a lion could speak, we could not understand him.

What has to be accepted, the given, is — so one could say — forms of life.

Tem de admitir-se que é verdade que saber qualquer coisa não implica pensar nisso - mas alguém que saiba de alguma coisa não tem de ser capaz de duvidar dela? E duvidar significa pensar.

Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly. Everything that can be said can be said clearly.

You sometimes see in a wind a piece of paper blowing about anyhow. Suppose the piece of paper could make the decision: ‘Now I want to go this way.’ I say: ‘Queer, this paper always decides where it is to go, and all the time it is the wind that blows it. I know it is the wind that blows it.’ That same force which moves it also in a different way moves its decisions.

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

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

Original German: Was der Fall ist, die Tatsache, ist das Bestehen von Sachverhalten.

If someone tells me he has bought the outfit of a tightrope walker I am not impressed until I see what is done with it.

A new word is like a fresh seed sown on the ground of the discussion.

Original German: Das Subjekt gehört nicht zur Welt, sondern es ist eine Grenze der Welt.

Don't get involved in partial problems, but always take flight to where there is a free view over the whole single great problem, even if this view is still not a clear one

If life becomes hard to bear we think of a change in our circumstances. But the most important and effective change, a change in our own attitude, hardly even occurs to us, and the resolution to take such a step is very difficult for us.