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" "Telling someone something he does not understand is pointless, even if you add that he will not be able to understand it. (That so often happens with someone you love.)
If you have a room which you do not want certain people to get into, put a lock on it for which they do not have the key. But there is no point in talking to them about it, unless of course you want them to admire the room from outside!
The honourable thing to do is to put a lock on the door which will be noticed only by those who can open it, not by the rest.
Ludwig Wittgenstein (26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian-born philosopher who spent much of his life in England.
Biography information from Wikiquote
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If you have a room which you do not want certain people to get into, put a lock on it for which they do not have the key. But there is no point in talking to them about it, unless of course you want them to admire the room from outside! The honorable thing to do is put a lock on the door which will be noticed only by those who can open it, not by the rest.
"303. "I can only believe that someone else is in pain, but I know it if I am." — Yes: one can make the decision to say "I believe he is in pain" instead of "He is in pain". But that is all. — — What looks like an explanation here, or like a statement about a mental process, is in truth an exchange of one expression for another which, while we are doing philosophy, seems the more appropriate one.
Just try — in a real case — to doubt someone else's fear or pain."
I have always thought that Darwin was wrong: his theory doesn’t account for all this variety of species. It hasn’t the necessary multiplicity. Nowadays some people are fond of saying that at last evolution has produced a species that is able to understand the whole process which gave it birth. Now that you can’t say.
[Drury, Conversation with Wittgenstein, p174]