1889-1951, Austrian Philosopher
A confession has to be part of your new life.
Ludwig Wittgenstein – [Confession]
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 – [Prison]
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 – [Thoughts and Thinking]
A new word is like a fresh seed sewn on the ground of the discussion.
Ludwig Wittgenstein – [Words]
A philosopher who is not taking part in discussions is like a boxer who never goes into the ring.
Ludwig Wittgenstein – [Debate]
A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.
Ludwig Wittgenstein – [Philosophers and Philosophy]
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 – [Death and Dying]
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 – [Problems]
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 – [Meaning]
For a truly religious man nothing is tragic.
Ludwig Wittgenstein – [Religion]
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 – [Humor]
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 – [Life and Living]
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 – [Superiority]
If we spoke a different language, we would perceive a somewhat different world.
Ludwig Wittgenstein – [Language]
If you do know that here is one hand, we'll grant you all the rest.
Ludwig Wittgenstein – [Certainty]
In order to be able to set a limit to thought, we should have to find both sides of the limit thinkable (i.e. we should have to be able to think what cannot be thought).
Ludwig Wittgenstein – [Thoughts and Thinking]
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 – [Catholicism]
It is one of the chief skills of the philosopher not to occupy himself with questions which do not concern him.
Ludwig Wittgenstein – [Philosophers and Philosophy]
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 – [Procreation]
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.''
Ludwig Wittgenstein – [Wisdom]