Ludwig Wittgenstein

The I, the I is what is deeplt mysterious.

Commenting on his "Tractatus"...It consists of two parts: the one written here plus all that I have not written. And it is precisely the 2nd part that is the important one.

As there is only a logical necessity, so there is only a logical impossibility.

A philosopher who is not taking part in discussions is like a boxer who never goes into the ring.

To believe in God is to see that life has meaning.

Just be indipendent of the external world, so you don't have to fear for what's in it.

The atmosphere surrounding this problem is terrible. Dense clouds of language lie about the crucial point. It is almost impossible to get through to it.

Nothing in the visual field allows you to infer that it is seen by an eye.

Philosophical problems can be compared to locks on safes, which can be opened by dialing a certain word or number, so that no force can open the door until just this word has been hit upon, and once it is hit upon any child can open it.

Logic is not a theory but a reflexion of the world.

Only let's cut out the transcendental twaddle when the whole thing is as plain as a sock on the jaw.

More wisdom is contained in the best crime fiction than in philosophy.

The mechanism which we don't understand is not anything in our soul, but rather that of the life of this expression.

No one can think a thought for me in the way that no one can don my hat for me.

Indeed how might it be if things revealed their colors only when (in our terms) no light fell on them - if, for example, the sky were black? Could we not then say, only by black light do they appear to us in their full colors?

Telling someone something that he does not understand is pointless, even if you add that he will not understand it. (That so often happens with someone you love.) If you have a room which you do not want certain people to get into, put a lock on it for which they do not have the key. But there is no point in talking to them about it, unless of course you want them to admire the room from the outside! The honourable thing to do is to put a lock on the door which will be noticed only by those who can open it, not by the rest.

Philosophy ought really to be written only as a form of poetry.

Philosophy, as we use the word, is a fight against the fascination which forms of expression exert upon us.

Philosophy must set limits to what can be thought; and, in doing so, to what cannot be thought. It must set limits to what cannot be thought by working outwards through what can be thought.

If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration, but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.

It is difficult to describe paths of thought where there are already many paths laid down, and not fall into one of the grooves.

At the basis of the whole modern view of the world lies the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena. So people stop short at natural laws as at something unassailable, as did the ancients at God and Fate. And they both are right and wrong. But the ancients were clearer, in so far as they recognized one clear conclusion, whereas in the modern system it should appear as though everything were explained.

The philosophical I is not the man, not the human body or the human soul of which psychology treats, but the metaphysical subject, the limit - not a part of the world.

It is so characteristic, that just when the mechanics of reproduction are so vastly improved, there are fewer and fewer people who know how music should be played.

If I wanted to eat an apple, and someone punched me in the stomach, taking away my appetite, then it was this punch that I originally wanted.

Superstition is the belief in the causal nexus.

The limits of your language are the limits of your world.

The sole remaining task for philosophy is the analysis of language.

If, for example, you were to think more deeply about death, then it would be truly strange if, in doing so, you did not encounter new images, new linguistic fields.

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.