Ludwig Wittgenstein Quotes: 228 Quotes on Self-Deception, Wisdom, Life, Death, and Existence's Mysteries

“The real discovery is the one which enables me to stop doing philosophy when I want to. The one that gives philosophy peace, so that it is no longer tormented by questions which bring itself into question.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein book Philosophical Investigations

§ 133
Philosophical Investigations (1953)

Peace , Question

“Philosophy hasn’t made any progress?—If someone scratches where it itches, do we have to see progress? Is it not genuine scratching otherwise, or genuine itching?”

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 98e

“Burning in effigy. Kissing the picture of one's beloved… it aims at nothing at all; we just behave this way and then we feel satisfied.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein

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

Way , Feeling , Kiss

“It is so characteristic, that just when the mechanics of reproduction are so vastly improved, there are fewer and fewer people who know how the music should be played.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Source: Personal Recollections (1981), p. 96

People , Music

“For remember that in general we don't use language according to strict rules — it hasn't been taught us by means of strict rules, either.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Source: 1930s-1951, The Blue Book (c. 1931–1935; published 1965), p. 25

“It seems to me as good as certain that we cannot get the upper hand against England. The English — the best race in the world — cannot lose! We, however, can lose and shall lose, if not this year then next year. The thought that our race is going to be beaten depresses me terribly, because I am completely German.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Writing about the eventual outcome of World War I, in which he was a volunteer in the Austro-Hungarian army (25 October 1914), as quoted in The First World War (2004) by Martin Gilbert, p. 104
1910s

World

“A teacher who can show good, or indeed astounding results while he is teaching, is still not on that account a good teacher, for it may be that, while his pupils are under his immediate influence, he raises them to a level which is not natural to them, without developing their own capacities for work at this level, so that they immediately decline again once the teacher leaves the schoolroom.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 43e

Nature , Teachers

“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

“For a truly religious man nothing is tragic.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Conversation of 1930
Personal Recollections (1981)

“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

“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

Mood , Nature , Thinking

“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

Life , Change

“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

Marriage , World , Religion , Sex

“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

“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)

Housing

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

Ludwig Wittgenstein

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

“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)

Books , Sense , Silence

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

Ludwig Wittgenstein

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

“But ordinary language is all right.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein

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

“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

School

“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

“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

Life , God , World , Understanding

“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

Tree , Help

“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)

Life

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

Ludwig Wittgenstein

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

Life , Parting

“The thought is the significant proposition.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein

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

“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

“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 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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“An entire mythology is stored within our language.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Source: 1930s-1951, Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951 (1993), Ch. 7 : Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough, p. 133

“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

“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

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

Ludwig Wittgenstein book Philosophical Investigations

§ 6
Philosophical Investigations (1953)

Imagination

“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)

“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

“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

“The world and life are one.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein

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

Life , World

“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

“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

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

Ludwig Wittgenstein book Philosophical Investigations

§ 470
Philosophical Investigations (1953)

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