The collection / 109 fragments

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109 results · Page 1 of 5Play this collection ▷

01Undated

When we say: Every word in language signifies “something”, we have, so far, said nothing whatsoever. What really comes before our mind when we understand a word? – Isn’t it something like a picture? Can’t it be a picture? Could someone understand the word “pain” that has never felt pain? A rose is red in the dark too?

Ludwig Wittgenstein / quote

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02Undated

Describe the aroma of coffee – why can’t it be done? Do we miss the words? What is the natural expression of an intention? –Look at a cat when it stalks a bird; or at a beast when it wants to escape. When we do philosophy we are like savages, primitive people, who hear expressions of the civilized men, put a false interpretation of them, and then draw the queerest conclusion from it.

Ludwig Wittgenstein / quote

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03Undated

I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.

Ludwig Wittgenstein / quote

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04Undated

A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.

Ludwig Wittgenstein / quote

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05Undated

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

Ludwig Wittgenstein / quote

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06Undated

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 / quote

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07Undated

I am my world.

Ludwig Wittgenstein / quote

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08Undated

I am sitting with a philosopher in the garden; he says again and again 'I know that that’s a tree', pointing to a tree that is near us. Someone else arrives and hears this, and I tell him: 'This fellow isn’t insane. We are only doing philosophy.

Ludwig Wittgenstein / quote

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09Undated

How small a thought it takes to fill a life.

Ludwig Wittgenstein / quote

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10Undated

Not how the world is, but that it is, is the mystery.

Ludwig Wittgenstein / quote

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11Undated

We feel that even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all.

Ludwig Wittgenstein / quote

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12Undated

A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably.

Ludwig Wittgenstein / quote

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13Undated

Don't think, but look! (PI 66)

Ludwig Wittgenstein / quote

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14Undated

An honest religious thinker is like a tightrope walker. He almost looks as though he were walking on nothing but air. His support is the slenderest imaginable. And yet it really is possible to walk on it.

Ludwig Wittgenstein / quote

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15Undated

Most of the propositions and questions to be found in philosophical works are not false but nonsensical.

Ludwig Wittgenstein / quote

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16Undated

Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly. Everything that can be said can be said clearly.

Ludwig Wittgenstein / quote

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17Undated

6.4311Der Tod ist kein Ereignis des Lebens. Den Tod erlebt man nicht.Wenn man unter Ewigkeit nicht unendliche Zeitdauer, sondern Unzeitlichkeit versteht, dann lebt der ewig, der in der Gegenwart lebt.Unser Leben ist ebenso endlos, wie unser Gesichtsfeld grenzenlos ist.6.4311Death is not an event of life. Death is not lived through.If by eternity is understood not endless temporal duration but timelessness, then he lives eternally who lives in the present.Our life is endless in the way that our visual field is without limit.

Ludwig Wittgenstein / quote

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18Undated

Der Zweck der Philosophie ist die logische Klärung der Gedanken.Die Philosophie ist keine Lehre, sondern eine Tätigkeit.Ein philosophisches Werk besteht wesentlich aus Erläuterungen.Das Resultat der Philosophie sind nicht »philosophische Sätze«, sondern das Klarwerden von Sätzen.Die Philosophie soll die Gedanken, die sonst, gleichsam, trübe und verschwommen sind, klar machen und scharf abgrenzen.4.112The object of philosophy is the logical clarification of thoughts.Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations.The result of philosophy is not a number of "philosophical propositions", but to make propositions clear.Philosophy should make clear and delimit sharply the thoughts which otherwise are, as it were, opaque and blurred.

Ludwig Wittgenstein / quote

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19Undated

Language disguises thought.

Ludwig Wittgenstein / quote

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20Undated

There is a truth in Schopenhauer’s view that philosophy is an organism, and that a book on philosophy, with a beginning and end, is a sort of contradiction. ... In philosophy matters are not simple enough for us to say ‘Let’s get a rough idea’, for we do not know the country except by knowing the connections between the roads.

Ludwig Wittgenstein / quote

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21Undated

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

Ludwig Wittgenstein / quote

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22Undated

The sole remaining task for philosophy is the analysis of language.

Ludwig Wittgenstein / quote

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23Undated

Perhaps what is inexpressible (what I find mysterious and am not able to express) is the background against which whatever I could express has its meaning.

Ludwig Wittgenstein / quote

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24Undated

But some of the greatest achievements in philosophy could only be compared with taking up some books which seemed to belong together, and putting them on different shelves; nothing more being final about their positions than that they no longer lie side by side. The onlooker who doesn’t know the difficulty of the task might well think in such a case that nothing at all had been achieved.

Ludwig Wittgenstein / quote

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