Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgensteinwas an Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. From 1929 to 1947, Wittgenstein taught at the University of Cambridge. During his lifetime he published just one slim book, the 75-page Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, one article, one book review and a children's dictionary. His voluminous manuscripts were edited and published posthumously. Philosophical Investigations appeared as a book in 1953, and has since come to be...
NationalityAustrian
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth26 April 1889
CityVienna, Austria
CountryAustria
The truth can be spoken only by someone who is already at home in it; not by someone who still lives in untruthfulness, and does no more than reach out towards it from within untruthfulness.
A teacher who can show good, or indeed astounding results while he is teaching, is still not on that account a good teacher, for it may be that, while his pupils are under his immediate influence, he raises them to a level which is not natural to them, without developing their own capacities for work at this level, so that they immediately decline again once the teacher leaves the schoolroom.
Proof, one might say, does not merely shew that it is like this, but: how it is like this. It shows how 13+14 yield 27.
One cannot guess how a word functions. One has to look at its use and learn from that. But the difficulty is to remove the prejudice which stands in the way of doing this. It is not a stupid prejudice.
Ask yourself whether our language is complete--whether it was so before the symbolism of chemistry and the notation of the infinitesimal calculus were incorporated in it; for these are, so to speak, suburbs of our language. (And how many houses or streets does it take before a town begins to be a town?) Our language can be seen as an ancient city: a maze of little streets and squares, of old and new houses, and of houses with additions from various periods; and this surrounded by a multitude of new boroughs with straight regular streets and uniform houses.
Idealism leads to realism if it is strictly thought out.
The only life that is happy is the life that can renounce the amenities of the world. To it the amenities of the world are so many graces of fate.
Don't for heaven's sake, be afraid of talking nonsense! But you must pay attention to your nonsense.
There is no more light in a genius than in any other honest man -- but he has a particular kind of lens to concentrate this light into a burning point.
You can't hear God speak to someone else, you can hear him only when you are being addressed.
Believers who have formulated such proofs [for God's existence] ... would never have come to believe as a result of such proofs
About what one can not speak, one must remain silent.
A confession has to be part of your new life.
You get tragedy where the tree, instead of bending, breaks.