Ludwig Wittgenstein Quotes

But if you say: "How am I to know what he means, when I see nothing but the signs he gives?" then I say: "How is he to know what he means, when he has nothing but the signs either?"

"Everything is already there in...." How does it come about that [an] arrow points? Doesn't it seem to carry in it something besides itself? — "No, not the dead line on paper; only the psychical thing, the meaning, can do that." — That is both true and false. The arrow points only in the application that a living being makes of it.

So in the end when one is doing philosophy one gets to the point where one would like just to emit an inarticulate sound.

When I obey a rule, I do not choose. I obey the rule blindly.

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."

To obey a rule, to make a report, to give an order, to play a game of chess, are customs (uses, institutions)

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.

The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity. (One is unable to notice something — because it is always before one's eyes.) The real foundations of his enquiry do not strike a man at all. Unless that fact has at some time struck him. — And this means: we fail to be struck by what, once seen, is most striking and most powerful.

Philosophy may in no way interfere with the actual use of language; it can in the end only describe it.

Your questions refer to words; so I have to talk about words. You say: The point isn't the word, but its meaning, and you think of the meaning as a thing of the same kind as the word, though also different from the word. Here the word, there the meaning.

What we are destroying is nothing but houses of cards and we are clearing up the ground of language on which they stood.

What we do is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use.

Like everything metaphysical the harmony between thought and reality is to be found in the grammar of the language.

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

Die Philosophie ist ein Kampf gegen die Verhexung unsres Verstandes durch die Mittel unserer Sprache.