Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Ludwig Wittgenstein (Austrian-born British Philosopher)

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

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

Knowledge is in the end based on acknowledgement.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Knowledge

Logic takes care of itself; all we have to do is to look and see how it does it.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Logic

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: Eternity, Dying, Death

A confession has to be part of your new life.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Honesty

The world of those who are happy is different from the world of those who are not.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Happiness

The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Simplicity

The human body is the best picture of the human soul.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Health, Body

Language is a part of our organism and no less complicated than it.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Language

Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Deception

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: Thinking, Thought, Thoughts

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

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

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

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

Someone who knows too much finds it hard not to lie.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Knowledge, Deception/Lying, Lies

The world of the happy is quite different from that of the unhappy.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Manners, Behavior

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

If you do know that here is one hand, we’ll grant you all the rest.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Certainty

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

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

Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Philosophy, Battle, 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

One often makes a remark and only later sees how true it is.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Speech, Truth

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 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

Our greatest stupidities may be very wise.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Stupidity

You get tragedy where the tree, instead of bending, breaks.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Tragedy

A new word is like a fresh seed sewn on the ground of the discussion.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Words, Fresh

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