xy

@xy, member from Sept. 25, 2023

Favourite quotes (21448)

“Control Your Own Destiny or Someone Else Will”

Jack Welch (1935) American executive: General Electric CEO

“You could attach prices to ideas. Some cost a lot some little. … And how do you pay for ideas? I believe: with courage.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 60e

“I never believed in God before.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

that I understand. But not: "I never really believed in Him before."
Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 53e

“Words are deeds.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Worte sind Taten.
Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 50e

“The logical picture of the facts is the thought.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

3
Original German: Das logische Bild der Tatsachen ist der Gedanke.
1920s, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922)

“To obey a rule, to make a report, to give an order, to play a game of chess, are customs”

Ludwig Wittgenstein book Philosophical Investigations

uses, institutions
§ 199
Philosophical Investigations (1953)

“It's only by thinking even more crazily than philosophers do that you can solve their problems.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 75e

“It is not by recognizing the want of courage in someone else that you acquire courage yourself..”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 44e

“Someone who knows too much finds it hard not to lie.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 64e

“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 (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 41e

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

Ludwig Wittgenstein book Philosophical Investigations

Pt II, p. 217
Philosophical Investigations (1953)

“Does man think because he has found that thinking pays?
Does he bring his children up because he has found it pays?”

Ludwig Wittgenstein book Philosophical Investigations

§ 467
Philosophical Investigations (1953)

“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 (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Journal entry (1 November 1914)
1910s, Notebooks 1914-1916

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

Ludwig Wittgenstein book Philosophical Investigations

§ 470
Philosophical Investigations (1953)

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

Ludwig Wittgenstein book Philosophical Investigations

§ 124
Philosophical Investigations (1953)

“Philosophical problems can be compared to locks on safes, which can be opened by dialing a certain word or number, so that no force can open the door until just this word has been hit upon, and once it is hit upon any child can open it.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Conversation of 1930, in Personal Recollections (1981) by Rush Rhees, Ch. 6
Variant: 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.
Source: 1930s-1951, Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951 (1993), Ch. 9 : Philosophy, p. 175

“If I cannot say a priori what elementary propositions there are, then the attempt to do so must lead to obvious nonsense.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

5.5571
Original German: Wenn ich die Elementarsätze nicht a priori angeben kann, dann muss es zu offenbarem Unsinn führen, sie angeben zu wollen.
1920s, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922)

“The world and life are one.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Original German: Die Welt und das Leben sind Eins.
1920s, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922)

“Nothing is more important than the formation of fictional concepts, which teach us at last to understand our own.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 85e

“Kierkegaard writes: If Christianity were so easy and cozy, why should God in his Scriptures have set Heaven and Earth in motion and threatened eternal punishments? — Question: But then in that case why is this Scriptures so unclear?”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 31e