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Ludwig Wittgenstein: 456 quotes286 likes

“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)

“The thought is the significant proposition.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein

4
Original German: Der Gedanke ist der sinnvolle Satz.
1920s, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922)

“A confession has to be part of your new life.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 18e

“What has to be accepted, the given, is — so one could say — forms of life.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein book Philosophical Investigations

Pt II, p. 226 of the 1968 English edition
Philosophical Investigations (1953)

“When I am furious about something, I sometimes beat the ground or a tree with my walking stick. But I certainly do not believe that the ground is to blame or that my beating can help anything… And all rites are of this kind.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Source: 1930s-1951, Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951 (1993), Ch. 7 : Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough, p. 131

“To believe in a God means to understand the question about the meaning of life.
To believe in a God means to see that the facts of the world are not the end of the matter.
To believe in God means to see that life has a meaning.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Journal entry (8 July 1916), p. 74e
1910s, Notebooks 1914-1916

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

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Source: 1930s-1951, Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951 (1993), Ch. 7 : Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough, p. 127

“Is it just I who cannot found a school, or can a philosopher never do so?”

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 69e

“But ordinary language is all right.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Source: 1930s-1951, The Blue Book (c. 1931–1935; published 1965), p. 28

“My difficulty is only an — enormous — difficulty of expression.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Journal entry (8 March 1915) p. 40
1910s, Notebooks 1914-1916

“The whole sense of the book might be summed up the following words: what can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Original German: Man könnte den ganzen Sinn des Buches etwa in die Worte fassen: Was sich überhaupt sagen lässt, lässt sich klar sagen; und wovon man nicht reden kann, darüber muss man schweigen.
Introduction
1920s, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922)

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

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 2e

“What we are destroying is nothing but houses of cards and we are clearing up the ground of language on which they stood.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein book Philosophical Investigations

§ 118
Philosophical Investigations (1953)

“In philosophy the race is to the one who can run slowest—the one who crosses the finish line last.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein

In Rennen der Philosophie gewinnt, wer am langsamsten laufen kann. Oder: der, der das Ziel zuletzt erreicht.
Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 40e

“Why in the world shouldn't they have regarded with awe and reverence that act by which the human race is perpetuated. 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.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein

In reaction to statements by Maurice O'Connor Drury who expressed disapproval of depictions of an ancient Egyptian god with an erect phallus, in "Conversations with Wittgenstein" as quoted in Leading a Human Life: Wittgenstein, Intentionality, and Romanticism (1997) by Richard Thomas Eldridge, p. 130
Attributed from posthumous publications

“I believe that one of the things Christianity says is that sound doctrines are all useless. That you have to change your life.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Or the direction of your life.
Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 53e

“Schiller writes in a letter [to Goethe, 17 December 1795] of a ‘poetic mood’. I think I know what he means, I think I am familiar with it myself. It is the mood of receptivity to nature and one in which one’s thoughts seem as vivid as nature itself.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein

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

“Every explanation is after all an hypothesis.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Source: 1930s-1951, Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951 (1993), Ch. 7 : Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough, p. 123

“For a truly religious man nothing is tragic.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Conversation of 1930
Personal Recollections (1981)

“What should we gain by a definition, as it can only lead us to other undefined terms?”

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Source: 1930s-1951, The Blue Book (c. 1931–1935; published 1965), p. 26