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.)
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Never stay up on the barren heights of cleverness, but come down into the green valleys of silliness.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Intelligence
It is one of the chief skills of the philosopher not to occupy himself with questions which do not concern him.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Philosophers, Philosophy
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
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
A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Comedy, Philosophers, Philosophy
Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Philosophy, One liners
The face is the soul of the body.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Body
Logic takes care of itself; all we have to do is to look and see how it does it.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Logic
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
Our greatest stupidities may be very wise.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Stupidity
The logic of the world is prior to all truth and falsehood.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Logic
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
Language is a part of our organism and no less complicated than it.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Language
Like everything metaphysical the harmony between thought and reality is to be found in the grammar of the language.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
The mystical is not how the world is, but that it is.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
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
Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Deception
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
Resting on your laurels is as dangerous as resting when you are walking in the snow. You doze off and die in your sleep.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Snow, Winners
A philosopher who is not taking part in discussions is like a boxer who never goes into the ring.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Knowledge is in the end based on acknowledgement.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Knowledge
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 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
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
Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Words, Language
If people did not sometimes do silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Topics: Dreams
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
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 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
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
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