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
The logic of the world is prior to all truth and falsehood.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Logic
A new word is like a fresh seed sewn on the ground of the discussion.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Words, Fresh
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
Someone who knows too much finds it hard not to lie.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Deception/Lying, Lies, Knowledge
A philosopher who is not taking part in discussions is like a boxer who never goes into the ring.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that’s unlocked and opens inwards; as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Prison
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.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Philosophy
The face is the soul of the body.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Body
Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Deception
Logic takes care of itself; all we have to do is to look and see how it does it.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Logic
A confession has to be part of your new life.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Honesty
Never stay up on the barren heights of cleverness, but come down into the green valleys of silliness.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Intelligence
We regard the photograph, the picture on our wall, as the object itself (the man, landscape, and so on) depicted there. This need not have been so. We could easily imagine people who did not have this relation to such pictures. Who, for example, would be repelled by photographs, because a face without color and even perhaps a face in reduced proportions struck them as inhuman.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Photography
The world of those who are happy is different from the world of those who are not.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Happiness
Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Death, Dying, Eternity
Telling someone something he does not understand is pointless, even if you add that he will not be able to understand it.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Understanding
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
If you do know that here is one hand, we’ll grant you all the rest.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Certainty
Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: One liners, Philosophy
The mystical is not how the world is, but that it is.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
If people did not sometimes do silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Dreams
The world of the happy is quite different from that of the unhappy.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Behavior, Manners
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: Thoughts, Thought, Thinking
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
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
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Silence
One often makes a remark and only later sees how true it is.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Speech, Truth
For a truly religious man nothing is tragic.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Religion
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
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
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Charles Sanders Peirce American Philosopher
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Karl Popper Austrian-born British Philosopher
Bertrand A. Russell British Philosopher, Mathematician
Henri Bergson French Philosopher
Franz Kafka Austrian Novelist
Franz Grillparzer Austrian Dramatist
Klemens Wenzel, Prince von Metternich Austrian Political leader
Alfred Adler Austrian Psychiatrist
Viktor Frankl Austrian Psychiatrist