Ludwig Wittgenstein: Trending quotes (page 2)

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“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)

Children , Thinking

“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

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

Problem

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

Ludwig Wittgenstein book Philosophical Investigations

§ 470
Philosophical Investigations (1953)

Thinking

“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)

Way

“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

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

Problem

“The world and life are one.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein

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

Life , World

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

Ludwig Wittgenstein

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

Understanding

“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

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

God , Question

“But if you say: "How am I to know what he means, when I see nothing but the signs he gives?" then I say: "How is he to know what he means, when he has nothing but the signs either?"”

Ludwig Wittgenstein book Philosophical Investigations

§ 504
Philosophical Investigations (1953)

“Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein book Philosophical Investigations

§ 6
Philosophical Investigations (1953)

Imagination

“The way you use the word "God" does not show whom you mean — but, rather, what you mean.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein

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

God , Way

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

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Source: 1930s-1951, Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951 (1993), Ch. 9 : Philosophy, p. 187

“One of the most difficult of the philosopher's tasks is to find out where the shoe pinches.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Source: 1910s, Notebooks 1914-1916, p. 61

Shoe

“The World and Life are one. Physiological life is of course not "Life". And neither is psychological life. Life is the world.
Ethics does not treat of the world. Ethics must be a condition of the world, like logic.
Ethics and Aesthetics are one.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Journal entry (24 July 1916), p. 77e
1910s, Notebooks 1914-1916

Life , World

“Bach wrote on the title page of his Orgelbüchlein: "To the glory of the most high God, and that my neighbour may be benefited thereby." That is what I would have liked to say about my work.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Wittgenstein in conversation with Maurice O'Connor Drury, cited in Rush Rhees (eds.) Recollections of Wittgenstein: Hermine Wittgenstein--Fania Pascal--F.R. Leavis--John King--M. O'C. Drury, Oxford University Press, 1984; p. xvi, and p. 168.
Attributed from posthumous publications

God

“A good guide will take you through the more important streets more often than he takes you down side streets; a bad guide will do the opposite. In philosophy I'm a rather bad guide.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein

As quoted in Wittgenstein and the Philosophy of Information (2008) edited by Alois Pichler and Herbert Hrachovec, p. 140
Attributed from posthumous publications

“Human beings have a physical need to tell themselves when at work: “Let’s have done with it now,” and it’s having constantly to go on thinking in the face of this need when philosophizing that makes this work so strenuous.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 86e

Thinking

“If a false thought is so much as expressed boldly and clearly, a great deal has already been gained.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 86e

Falseness

“Though a state of affairs that would contravene the laws of physics can be represented by us spatially, one that would contravene the laws of geometry cannot.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein

3.0321
Original German: Wohl können wir einen Sachverhalt räumlich darstellen, welcher den Gesetzen der Physik, aber keinen, der den Gesetzen der Geometrie zuwiderliefe.
1920s, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922)

Law

“If a person tells me he has been to the worst places I have no reason to judge him; but if he tells me it was his superior wisdom that enabled him to go there, then I know he is a fraud.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Conversation of 1930
Personal Recollections (1981)

Wisdom , Fraud , Personality