Great Throughts Treasury

"Philosophy limits the thinkable and therefore the unthinkable."

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

"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."

"Philosophy is not a theory but an activity. A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations. The result of philosophy is not a number of "philosophical propositions." but to make propositions clear."

"Philosophy is an activity and not a theory."

"Reading the Socratic dialogues one has the feeling: what a frightful waste of time! What's the point of these arguments that prove nothing and clarify nothing?"

"Philosophy unravels the knots in our thinking; hence its results must be simple, but its activity is as complicated as the knots that it unravels."

"Philosophy must set limits to what can be thought; and, in doing so, to what cannot be thought. It must set limits to what cannot be thought by working outwards through what can be thought."

"Religion is, as it were, the calm bottom of the sea at its deepest point, which remains calm however high the waves on the surface may be."

"Propositions are truth-functions of elementary propositions. (An elementary proposition is a truth-function of itself.)"

"Philosophy not about telling how it is, but about playing according to the terms of the listener"

"Religion as madness is a madness springing from irreligiousness."

"Philosophy ought really to be written only as a form of poetry."

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

"Propositions show what they say: tautologies and contradictions show that they say nothing."

"Roughly speaking: objects are colorless"

"Resting on your laurels is as dangerous as resting when you are walking in the snow. You doze off and die in your sleep."

"So we do sometimes think because it has been found to pay."

"Remember that we sometimes demand explanations for the sake not of their content, but of their form. Our requirement is an architectural one; the explanation a kind of sham corbel that supports nothing."

"Suppose we think while we talk or write?I mean, as we normally do?we shall not in general say that we think quicker than we talk, but the thought seems not to be separate from the expression."

"Suppose someone were to say: 'Imagine this butterfly exactly as it is, but ugly instead of beautiful'?!"

"Skepticism is not irrefutable, but obviously nonsensical, when it tries to raise doubts where no questions can be asked. For doubt can exist only where a question exists, a question only where an answer exists, and an answer only where something can be said."

"Suppose that at certain intervals situations repeated themselves, and that someone said time was circular. Would this be right or wrong? Neither. It would only be another way of expression, and we could just as well talk of a circular time. However, the picture of time as flowing, as having a direction, is one that suggests itself very vigorously."

"Sometimes, in doing philosophy, one just wants to utter an inarticulate sound."

"Superstition is the belief in the causal nexus."

"Teaching philosophy involves the same immense difficulty as instruction in geography would have if a pupil brought with him a mass of false and far too simple ideas about the course and connections of the routes of rivers and mountain chains."

"Tell me how you are searching, and I will tell you what you are searching for."

"Tell them I've had a wonderful life. [Last words]"

"Tell me, Wittgenstein's asked a friend, why do people always say, it was natural for man to assume that the sun went round the earth rather than that the earth was rotating? His friend replied, Well, obviously because it just looks as though the Sun is going round the Earth. Wittgenstein replied, Well, what would it have looked like if it had looked as though the Earth was rotating?"

"That is, I cannot bring out how far the proposition is the picture of the situation. I am almost inclined to give up all my efforts."

"That it doesn?t strike us at all when we look around us, move about in space, feel our own bodies, etc. etc., shows how natural these things are to us. We do not notice that we see space perspectivelly or that our visual field is in some sense blurred towards the edges. It doesn?t strike us and never can strike us because it is the way we perceive. We never give it a thought and it?s impossible we should, since there is nothing that contrasts with the form of our world. What I wanted to say is it?s strange that those who ascribe reality only to things and not to our ideas move about so unquestioningly in the world as idea and never long to escape from it."

"That which cannot be said must not be said. That which cannot be said, one must be silent thereof."

"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."

"The aspect of things that are most important to us are hidden because of their familiarity and simplicity."

"The atmosphere surrounding this problem is terrible. Dense clouds of language lie about the crucial point. It is almost impossible to get through to it."

"The book will, therefore, draw a limit to thinking, or rather?not to thinking, but to the expression of thoughts; for, in order to draw a limit to thinking we should have to be able to think both sides of this limit (we should therefore have to be able to think what cannot be thought)."

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

"The aim of philosophy is to erect a wall at the point where language stops anyway."

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

"The aim of the book is to set a limit to thought, or rather ? not to thought, but to the expression of thoughts: for in order to be able to set a limit to thought, we should have to find both sides of the limit thinkable (i.e. we should have to be able to think what cannot be thought). It will therefore only be in language that the limit can be set, and what lies on the other side of the limit will simply be nonsense."

"The common behavior of mankind is the system of reference by means of which we interpret an unknown language."

"The eternal life is given to those who live in the present."

"The distinction between the two types of proposition [grammatical/logical and material/empirical] lies at the heart of Wittgenstein?s entire philosophy: in his thinking about psychology, mathematics, aesthetics, and even religion, his central criticism of those with whom he disagrees is that they have confused a grammatical proposition with a material one, and have presented as a discovery something that should properly be seen as a grammatical ... innovation."

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

"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."

"The form is the possibility of the structure."

"The face is the soul of the body."

"The less somebody knows and understand himself the less great he is, however great may be his talent. For this reason our scientists are not great."

"The logic of the world is prior to all truth and falsehood."

"The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. All I know is what I have words for."