An Austrian philosopher who contributed several ground-breaking ideas to philosophy, mainly in the foundations of logic, the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of mathematics, and especially the philosophy of language. His influence has been wide-ranging, placing him among the most significant philosophers of the 20th century.
He is regarded by some professionals as the most important philosopher since Immanuel Kant. With time, his theories began to transform twentieth-century philosophy.
Raised in a prominent Viennese family, Ludwig Wittgenstein studied engineering in Germany and England, but became interested in the foundations of mathematics and pursued philosophical studies before entering the Austrian army during World War I. Wittgenstein argued it to be an avoidable mistake that had caused great difficulties in the philosophy of mind. His views on this issue were a significant influence on Ryle and others.
In his later work, Wittgenstein applied this method of analysis to philosophical problems related to epistemology, mathematics, and ethics. (1889 – 1951)
– Ludwig Wittgenstein Quotes –
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.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
Philosophy is like trying to open a safe with a combination lock: each little adjustment of the dials seems to achieve nothing, only when everything is in place does the door open.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
A philosopher who is not taking part in discussions is like a boxer who never goes into the ring.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
Someone who knows too much finds it hard not to lie.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
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.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
Language is a part of our organism and no less complicated than it.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
Our greatest stupidities may be very wise.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that’s unlocked and opens inwards; as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
A philosophical problem has the form: I don’t know my way about.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
Man has to awaken to wonder – and so perhaps do peoples. Science is a way of sending him to sleep again.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
There are remarks that sow and remarks that reap.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
You get tragedy where the tree, instead of bending, breaks.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
A new word is like a fresh seed sown on the ground of the discussion.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
Logic takes care of itself; all we have to do is to look and see how it does it.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
Resting on your laurels is as dangerous as resting when you are walking in the snow. You doze off and die in your sleep.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
Logic is not a body of doctrine, but a mirror-image of the world. Logic is transcendental.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
One of the most misleading representational techniques in our language is the use of the word ‘I.’
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
Nowadays it is the fashion to emphasize the horrors of the last war. I didn’t find it so horrible. There are just as horrible things happening all round us today, if only we had eyes to see them.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
One often makes a remark and only later sees how true it is.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
The common behavior of mankind is the system of reference by means of which we interpret an unknown language.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
Not every religion has to have St. Augustine’s attitude to sex. Why even in our culture marriages are celebrated in a church, everyone present knows what is going to happen that night, but that doesn’t prevent it being a religious ceremony.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
Logic must look after itself. In a certain sense, we cannot make mistakes in logic.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
You learned the concept ‘pain’ when you learned language.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
A confession has to be part of your new life.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
Like everything metaphysical the harmony between thought and reality is to be found in the grammar of the language.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
If people never did silly things nothing intelligent would ever get done.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
What can be shown, cannot be said.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
Never stay up on the barren heights of cleverness, but come down into the green valleys of silliness.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
It is one of the chief skills of the philosopher not to occupy himself with questions which do not concern him.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
The limits of my language means the limits of my world.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
The logic of the world is prior to all truth and falsehood.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
It is so characteristic, that just when the mechanics of reproduction are so vastly improved, there are fewer and fewer people who know how the music should be played.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
Propositions show what they say: tautologies and contradictions show that they say nothing.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
It is an hypothesis that the sun will rise tomorrow: and this means that we do not know whether it will rise.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
Humor is not a mood but a way of looking at the world. So if it is correct to say that humor was stamped out in Nazi Germany, that does not mean that people were not in good spirits, or anything of that sort, but something much deeper and more important.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
The world is the totality of facts, not of things.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
I sit astride life like a bad rider on a horse. I only owe it to the horse’s good nature that I am not thrown off at this very moment.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
When one is frightened of the truth then it is never the whole truth that one has an inkling of.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
The world is independent of my will.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
A man’s thinking goes on within his consciousness in a seclusion in comparison with which any physical seclusion is an exhibition to public view.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
The human body is the best picture of the human soul.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
I don’t know why we are here, but I’m pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
What is your aim in philosophy? To show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
It seems to me that, in every culture, I come across a chapter headed “Wisdom.” And then I know exactly what is going to follow: “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.”
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
An inner process stands in need of outward criteria.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
The face is the soul of the body.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
Knowledge is in the end based on acknowledgement.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
If a lion could talk, we could not understand him.
~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
