Πέμπτη 10 Φεβρουαρίου 2011

Ludwig Wittgenstein Quotes


Philosophy:

What is your aim in philosophy? To show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle.  
 
Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.

Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.

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. 
 
A philosophical problem has the form: I don't know my way about.

A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes. 

It is an hypothesis that the sun will rise tomorrow: and this means that we do not know whether it will rise.


Logic:


Logic is not a body of doctrine, but a mirror-image of the world. Logic is transcendental.

Logic must look after itself. In a certain sense, we cannot make mistakes in logic.

Logic takes care of itself; all we have to do is to look and see how it does it.

The logic of the world is prior to all truth and falsehood.

The World:


The world is independent of my will.

The world is the totality of facts, not of things.

A picture is a fact.  


Language:

The limits of my language means the limits of my world.

Language is a part of our organism and no less complicated than it.


A new word is like a fresh seed sown on the ground of the discussion.


Propositions show what they say: tautologies and contradictions show that they say nothing.

The common behavior of mankind is the system of reference by means of which we interpret an unknown language. 


One of the most misleading representational techniques in our language is the use of the word 'I.' 

 


Human/ Life/ Knowledge:

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.

The human body is the best picture of the human soul.


The face is the soul of the body.


I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves. 

Never stay up on the barren heights of cleverness, but come down into the green valleys of silliness. 

If people never did silly things nothing intelligent would ever get done.

Our greatest stupidities may be very wise.  

Knowledge is in the end based on acknowledgement.

Someone who knows too much finds it hard not to lie
 
Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.
 
One often makes a remark and only later sees how true it is.

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."  

What can be shown, cannot be said.

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.



Nowadays it is the fashion to emphasize the horrors of the last war. I didn't find it so horrible. There are just as horrible things happening all round us today, if only we had eyes to see them.

You get tragedy where the tree, instead of bending, breaks.
 

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.

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