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
The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Simplicity
You must always be puzzled by mental illness. The thing I would dread most, if I became mentally ill, would be your adopting a common sense attitude; that you could take it for granted that I was deluded.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Insanity
Language is a part of our organism and no less complicated than it.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Language
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
Topics: Problems
He who lives in the present lives in eternity.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: The Present
There are remarks that sow and remarks that reap.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Speech, Conversation
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
Never stay up on the barren heights of cleverness, but come down into the green valleys of silliness.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Intelligence
Knowledge is in the end based on acknowledgement.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Knowledge
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
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
You get tragedy where the tree, instead of bending, breaks.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Tragedy
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 limits of my language are the limits of my mind. All I know is what I have words for.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Language, Words
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
Logic pervades the world; the limits of the world are also the limits of logic.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Logic, Decisions
The world of those who are happy is different from the world of those who are not.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Happiness
Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Philosophy, One liners
Our civilization is characterized by the word “progress.” Progress is its form rather than making progress being one of its features. Typically it constructs. It is occupied with building an ever more complicated structure. And even clarity is sought only
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Progress
I don’t know why we are here, but I’m pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
If we spoke a different language, we would perceive a somewhat different world.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Language
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
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, Thinking, Thought
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
A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Philosophy, Comedy, Philosophers
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Silence
Someone who knows too much finds it hard not to lie.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Lies, Knowledge, Deception/Lying
Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Language, Words
The world of the happy is quite different from that of the unhappy.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Behavior, Manners
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