Quotes by "Ludwig Wittgenstein"

There is a truth in Schopenhauer’s view that philosophy is an organism, and that a book on philosophy, with a beginning and end, is a sort of contradiction. ... In philosophy matters are not simple enough for us to say ‘Let’s get a rough idea’, for we do not know the country except by knowing the connections between the roads.

Philosophy, as we use the word, is a fight against the fascination which forms of expression exert upon us.

The sole remaining task for philosophy is the analysis of language.

Perhaps what is inexpressible (what I find mysterious and am not able to express) is the background against which whatever I could express has its meaning.

In philosophy it is always good to put a question instead of an answer to a question. For an answer to the philosophical question may easily be unfair; disposing of it by means of another question is not.

But some of the greatest achievements in philosophy could only be compared with taking up some books which seemed to belong together, and putting them on different shelves; nothing more being final about their positions than that they no longer lie side by side. The onlooker who doesn’t know the difficulty of the task might well think in such a case that nothing at all had been achieved.

Knowledge is in the end based on acknowledgement.

The agreement or disagreement or its sense with reality constitutes its truth or falsity.

If you and I are to live religious lives, it mustn't be that we talk a lot about religion, but that our manner of life is different. It is my belief that only if you try to be helpful to other people will you in the end find your way to God.

Concerning that which cannot be talked about, we should not say anything.

I think one of the things you and I have to learn is that we have to live without the consolation of belonging to a Church.... Of one thing I am certain. The religion of the future will have to be extremely ascetic, and by that I don't mean just going without food and drink.

The problems are solved, not by giving new information, but by arranging what we have known since long.

What is the proof that I know something? Most certainly not my saying I know it.

But doesn't it come out here that knowledge is related to a decision?

Man has to awaken to wonder - and so perhaps do peoples. Science is a way of sending him to sleep again.

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.

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.

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.

Man has to awaken to wonder - and so perhaps do peoples. Science is a way of sending him to sleep again.

Never stay up on the barren heights of cleverness, but come down into the green valleys of silliness.