Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) fully Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein was an Austrian-born British philosopher, logician, engineer, and architect. Regarded by many as the greatest philosopher of the 20th century, Wittgenstein’s work on the philosophy of logical positivism and language greatly influenced later British and American philosophy.
Born in Vienna into one of Europe’s wealthiest families, Wittgenstein studied mechanical engineering at Berlin and at Manchester, where he did research on aeronautics and designed a jet-reaction propeller.
After reading Bertrand A. Russell’s The Principles of Mathematics (1903) Wittgenstein abandoned his engineering research and studied mathematical logic at Cambridge under Russell, who said approvingly that Wittgenstein “soon knew all that I had to teach.”
Wittgenstein then turned to the study of language and its relationship to the world. His two major works are Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung (1921; Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 1922) and Philosophische Untersuchungen (published posthumously in 1953; Philosophical Investigations.) He argued that words—and language in general—take on different roles depending on the context in which they are used and that they do not have definite intrinsic meanings.
Many of Wittgenstein’s notebooks and manuscripts have been posthumously published—Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics (1956,) The Blue and Brown Books (1958,) Philosophische Bemerkungen (1964,) and On Certainty (1969.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Ludwig Wittgenstein
It is one of the chief skills of the philosopher not to occupy himself with questions which do not concern him.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Philosophy, Philosophers
Humor is not a mood but a way of looking at the world. So if it is correct to say that humor was stamped out in Nazi Germany, that does not mean that people were not in good spirits, or anything of that sort, but something much deeper and more important.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Humor
Language is a part of our organism and no less complicated than it.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Language
Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Words, Language
If one understands eternity as timelessness, and not as an unending timespan, then whoever lives in the present lives for all time.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Eternity
The human body is the best picture of the human soul.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Health, Body
You get tragedy where the tree, instead of bending, breaks.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Tragedy
Like everything metaphysical the harmony between thought and reality is to be found in the grammar of the language.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
A confession has to be part of your new life.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Honesty
Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Philosophy, Battle, Language
The world of the happy is quite different from that of the unhappy.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Manners, Behavior
I sit astride life like a bad rider on a horse. I only owe it to the horse’s good nature that I am not thrown off at this very moment.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
It is a dogma of the Roman Church that the existence of God can be proved by natural reason. Now this dogma would make it impossible for me to be a Roman Catholic. If I thought of God as another being like myself, outside myself, only infinitely more powerful, then I would regard it as my duty to defy him.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Religion
Logic pervades the world; the limits of the world are also the limits of logic.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Decisions, Logic
In order to be able to set a limit to thought, we should have to find both sides of the limit thinkable (i.e. we should have to be able to think what cannot be thought).
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Thinking, Thoughts, Thought
Knowledge is in the end based on acknowledgement.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Knowledge
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
Topics: Philosophy
He who lives in the present lives in eternity.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: The Present
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
Topics: Birth
Man has to awaken to wonder—and so perhaps do peoples. Science is a way of sending him to sleep again.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Science
Never stay up on the barren heights of cleverness, but come down into the green valleys of silliness.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Intelligence
The mystical is not how the world is, but that it is.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
One often makes a remark and only later sees how true it is.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Speech, Truth
For a large class of cases—though not for all—in which we employ the word “meaning” it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Understanding, Meaning
Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Deception
No one likes having offended another person; hence everyone feels so much better if the other person doesn’t show he’s been offended. Nobody likes being confronted by a wounded spaniel. Remember that. It is much easier patiently—and tolerantly—to avoid the person you have injured than to approach him as a friend. You need courage for that.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Injury
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Silence
A man’s thinking goes on within his consciousness in a seclusion in comparison with which any physical seclusion is an exhibition to public view.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Thought, Thoughts, Thinking
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
The face is the soul of the body.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Body
There are remarks that sow and remarks that reap.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Speech, Conversation
Someone who knows too much finds it hard not to lie.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Knowledge, Lies, Deception/Lying
It seems to me that, in every culture, I come across a chapter headed “Wisdom.” And then I know exactly what is going to follow: “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Wisdom
The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. All I know is what I have words for.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Words, Language
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
Topics: Religion
I don’t know why we are here, but I’m pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: One liners, Philosophy
The world of those who are happy is different from the world of those who are not.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Happiness
A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Philosophy, Comedy, Philosophers
The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Simplicity
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