Famous Ludwig Wittgenstein Quotes Explained
Ludwig Wittgenstein was an Austrian-British philosopher whose work transformed 20th-century analytic philosophy. Wittgenstein's two great works — the <em>Tractatus</em> (1921) and the <em>Philosophical Investigations</em> (1953) — pull in nearly opposite directions. Below are eight of the most-quoted lines from across his career.
“The world is everything that is the case.”
Original German: Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist .
What it means
The opening proposition of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921), section 1. Wittgenstein begins with the metaphysical thesis that reality is the totality of facts (states of affairs) rather than of things, which sets up the picture theory of language that follows.
“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen.
What it means
The famous closing proposition of the Tractatus (1921), section 7. Wittgenstein's conclusion is that ethics, aesthetics, and metaphysics fall outside the limits of factual language; the response to questions that cannot be answered in language is not bad philosophy but silence.
“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”
Variant translations: | The limits of my language stand for the limits of my world. | The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. All I know is what I have words for. | Original German: Die Grenzen meiner Sprache bedeuten die Grenzen meiner Welt.
What it means
From the Tractatus, section 5.6. Wittgenstein's claim is that one's grasp of reality is bounded by the linguistic resources one has to articulate it; extending the language extends the world. The principle has been adopted by very different traditions, from analytic philosophy to literary criticism.
“If a lion could speak, we could not understand him.”
Pt II, p. 223 of the 1968 English edition
What it means
From the Philosophical Investigations, Part II. Wittgenstein's example: even if a lion produced grammatical sentences, we would lack the shared form of life — the practices, needs, and surroundings — required for those sentences to be intelligible to us. Meaning is anchored in shared activity.
Attributed to Ludwig Wittgenstein:
“A philosophical problem has the form: I don't know my way about.”
What it means
From the Philosophical Investigations, §123. Wittgenstein redescribes philosophical problems as instances of conceptual disorientation rather than of missing information: the philosopher's job is not to discover new facts but to clarify the language-games in which the confusion arose.
Attributed to Ludwig Wittgenstein:
“We feel that even when all possible scientific questions have been answered, the problems of life remain completely untouched.”
What it means
From the Tractatus, section 6.52. Wittgenstein anticipates the objection that complete natural science would settle all questions: even when it has, the questions that drive people to philosophy — about value, meaning, the point of living — will be unaffected, because they were never empirical to begin with.
Attributed to Ludwig Wittgenstein:
“It is in language that an expectation and its fulfilment make contact.”
What it means
From the Philosophical Investigations, §445. Wittgenstein's claim is that the relation of an expectation to what fulfils it is itself a feature of language, not a metaphysical correspondence: the expectation "that p" is fulfilled by p, and the connection is internal to the linguistic practice.
“Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.”
Die Philosophie ist ein Kampf gegen die Verhexung unsres Verstandes durch die Mittel unserer Sprache.
What it means
From the Philosophical Investigations, §109. Wittgenstein's late conception of philosophy as therapy: the discipline's task is to dissolve the conceptual confusions that language constantly produces, by tracing them back to the linguistic patterns that generated them.