Top 300 Ludwig Wittgenstein Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “Sometimes, in doing philosophy, one just wants to utter an inarticulate sound.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

102. “Here the term ‘language-game’ is meant to bring into prominence the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, of a form of life.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

103. “Golden is a surface colour.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

104. “A philosopher always finds more grass to feed upon in the valleys of stupidity than on the arid heights of intelligence.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

105. “An image is not a picture, but a picture can correspond to it.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

106. “Conscience is the voice of God.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

107. “Always get rid of theory private object in this way: assume that it constantly changes, but that you do not notice the change because your memory constantly deceives you.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

108. “Black seems to make a colour cloudy, but darkness doesn’t. A ruby could thus keep getting darker without ever becoming cloudy; but if it became blackish red, it would become cloudy.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

109. “A philosopher who is not taking part in discussions is like a boxer who never goes into the ring.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

110. “Philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

111. “I won’t say ‘See you tomorrow’ because that would be like predicting the future, and I’m pretty sure I can’t do that.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

112. “The real question of life after death isn’t whether or not it exists, but even if it does what problem this really solves.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

113. “Ambition is the death of thought.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

114. “My aim is: to teach you to pass from a piece of disguised nonsense to something that is patent nonsense.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

115. “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

116. “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

117. “When we can’t think for ourselves, we can always quote.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

118. “To believe in a God means to see that the facts of the world are not the end of the matter.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

119. “Everything that can be said, can be said clearly.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

120. “If one understands eternity as timelessness, and not as an unending timespan, then whoever lives in the present lives for all time.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

121. “Like everything metaphysical the harmony between thought and reality is to be found in the grammar of the language.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

122. “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.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

123. “Language disguises thought.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

124. “A main cause of philosophical disease-an unbalanced diet: one nourishes one’s thinking with only one kind of example.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

125. “At the core of all well-founded belief lies belief that is unfounded.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

126. “We have got onto slippery ice where there is no friction and so in a certain sense the conditions are ideal, but also, just because of that, we are unable to walk. We want to walk so we need friction. Back to the rough ground!”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

127. “My day passes between logic, whistling, going for walks, and being depressed. I wish to God that I were more intelligent and everything would finally become clear to me – or else that I needn’t live much longer.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

128. “People often say that aesthetics is a branch of psychology. The idea is that once we are more advanced-all the mysteries of art-will be understood by psychological experiments. Exceedingly stupid at this idea is, this is roughly it.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

129. “The difference between a good and a poor architect is that the poor architect succumbs to every temptation and the good one resists it.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

130. “If God had looked into our minds he would not have been able to see there whom we were speaking of.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

131. “The object of philosophy is the logical clarification of thought.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

132. “Kierkegaard was by far the most profound thinker of the last century. Kierkegaard was a saint.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

133. “Because our goals are not lofty but illusory, our problems are not difficult, but nonsensical.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

134. “The classifications made by philosophers and psychologists are like trying to classify clouds by their shape.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

135. “A picture is a model of reality.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

136. “There is no more light in a genius than in any other honest man – but he has a particular kind of lens to concentrate this light into a burning point.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

137. “A new word is like a fresh seed sown on the ground of the discussion.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

138. “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.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

139. “There are, indeed, things that are inexpressible. They show themselves. They are what is mystical.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

140. “You can’t think decently if you’re not willing to hurt yourself.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

141. “Only a man who lives not in time but in the present is happy.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

142. “We must do away with all explanation, and description alone must take its place.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

143. “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

144. “For an answer which cannot be expressed the question too cannot be expressed. The riddle does not exist. If a question can be put at all, then it can also be answered.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

145. “That of which we cannot speak, we must pass over in silence.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

146. “We could present spatially an atomic fact which contradicted the laws of physics, but not one which contradicted the laws of geometry.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

147. “The only life that is happy is the life that can renounce the amenities of the world. To it the amenities of the world are so many graces of fate.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

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

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

149. “You can’t be reluctant to give up your lie and still tell the truth.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

150. “If you use a trick in logic, whom can you be tricking other than yourself?”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein