Ludwig Wittgenstein Quotes

The problems are dissolved in the actual sense of the word — like a lump of sugar in water.

What makes a subject difficult to understand — if it is significant, important — is not that some special instruction about abstruse things is necessary to understand it. Rather it is the contrast between the understanding of the subject and what most people want to see. Because of this the very things that are most obvious can become the most difficult to understand. What has to be overcome is not difficulty of the intellect but of the will. [Nicht eine Schwierigkeit des Verstandes, sondern des Willens ist zu überwinden.]

We must plow through the whole of language.

The ceremonial (hot or cold) as opposed to the haphazard (lukewarm) characterizes piety.

Burning in effigy. Kissing the picture of one's beloved... it aims at nothing at all; we just behave this way and then we feel satisfied.

A religious symbol does not rest on any opinion. And error belongs only with opinion. One would like to say: This is what took place here; laugh, if you can.

Every explanation is after all an hypothesis.

Frazer's account of the magical and religious views of mankind is unsatisfactory; it makes these views look like errors.

I must plunge into the water of doubt again and again.

The difficulty in philosophy is to say no more than we know.

But ordinary language is all right.

What should we gain by a definition, as it can only lead us to other undefined terms?

For remember that in general we don't use language according to strict rules — it hasn't been taught us by means of strict rules, either.

The idea that in order to get clear about the meaning of a general term one had to find the common element in all its applications has shackled philosophical investigation; for it has not only led to no result, but also made the philosopher dismiss as irrelevant the concrete cases, which alone could have helped him understand the usage of the general term.

What I give is the morphology of the use of an expression. I show that it has kinds of uses of which you had not dreamed. In philosophy one feels forced to look at a concept in a certain way. What I do is suggest, or even invent, other ways of looking at it. I suggest possibilities of which you had not previously thought. You thought that there was one possibility, or only two at most. But I made you think of others. Furthermore, I made you see that it was absurd to expect the concept to conform to those narrow possibilities. Thus your mental cramp is relieved, and you are free to look around the field of use of the expression and to describe the different kinds of uses of it.