Ludwig Wittgenstein Quotes
Ludwig Wittgenstein was an Austrian-British philosopher whose work transformed 20th-century analytic philosophy. His 1921 Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, written largely while he served in the First World War, set out a picture theory of language and concluded with the famous injunction that whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. The quotes below are attributed to Ludwig Wittgenstein, organized by topic.
Browse Ludwig Wittgenstein by topic
Ludwig Wittgenstein on Death
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“Die Philosophie ist ein Kampf gegen die Verhexung unsres Verstandes durch die Mittel unserer Sprache.”
Philosophical Investigations(1953) | Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of our language. § 109
Ludwig Wittgenstein on Freedom
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“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.”
Notebooks 1914-1916 | Journal entry (1 November 1914) -
“People are deeply imbedded in philosophical, i.e., grammatical confusions. And to free them presupposes pulling them out of the immensely manifold connections they are caught up in.”
Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951(1993) | Ch. 9 : Philosophy, p. 185
Ludwig Wittgenstein on God
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“If God had looked into our minds he would not have been able to see there whom we were speaking of.”
Philosophical Investigations(1953) | Pt II, p. 217 -
“Religion is, as it were, the calm bottom of the sea at its deepest point, which remains calm however high the waves on the surface may be.”
Culture and Value(1980) | p. 53e -
“Frazer's account of the magical and religious views of mankind is unsatisfactory; it makes these views look like errors .”
Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951(1993) | Ch. 7 : Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough , p. 119 -
“A religious symbol does not rest on any opinion . And error belongs only with opinion. One would like to say: This is what took place here; laugh, if you can.”
Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951(1993) | Ch. 7 : Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough , p. 123
Ludwig Wittgenstein on Happiness
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“You won't — I really believe — get too much out of reading it. Because you won't understand it; the content will seem strange to you. In reality, it isn't strange to you, for the point is ethical. I once wanted to give a few words in the foreword which now actually are not in it, which, however, I'll write to you now because they might be a key for you: I wanted to write that my work consists of two parts: of the one which is here, and of everything which I have not written. And precisely this second part is the important one.”
On his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus , in a letter to Ludwig von Ficker (1919), published in Wittgenstein : Sources and Perspectives (1979) by C. Grant Luckhard
Ludwig Wittgenstein on Justice
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“The Sabbath is not simply a time to rest, to recuperate. We should look at our work from the outside, not just from within.”
Culture and Value(1980) | p. 91e -
“So in the end when one is doing philosophy one gets to the point where one would like just to emit an inarticulate sound.”
Philosophical Investigations(1953) | § 261
Ludwig Wittgenstein on Knowledge
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Attributed to Ludwig Wittgenstein:
“A philosophical problem has the form: I don't know my way about.”
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“Don't think, but look!”
§ 66 -
“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. -
“I work quite diligently and wish that I were better and smarter. And these both are one and the same.”
In a letter to Paul Engelmann (1917) as quoted in The Idea of Justice (2010) by Amartya Sen , p. 31 -
“On his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus , in a letter to Ludwig von Ficker (1919), published in Wittgenstein : Sources and Perspectives (1979) by C. Grant Luckhard”
You won't — I really believe — get too much out of reading it. Because you won't understand it; the content will seem strange to you. In reality, it isn't strange to you, for the point is ethical. I once wanted to give a few words in the foreword which now actually are not in it, which, however, I'll write to you now because they might be a key for you: I wanted to write that my work consists of t -
“It is necessary to be given the prop that all elementary props are given." This is not necessary because it is even impossible . There is no such prop! That all elementary props are given is SHOWN by there being none having an elementary sense which is not given.”
Notes of 1919, as quoted in Ludwig Wittgenstein : The Duty of Genius (1990) by Ray Monk -
“"I never believed in God before." — that I understand. But not: "I never really believed in Him before."”
Culture and Value(1980) | p. 53e -
“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 .”
Personal Recollections(1981) | Conversation of 1930 -
“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.”
Personal Recollections(1981) | p. 96 -
“But if you say: "How am I to know what he means, when I see nothing but the signs he gives?" then I say: "How is he to know what he means, when he has nothing but the signs either?"”
Philosophical Investigations(1953) | § 504 -
“206. If someone asked us 'but is that true?' we might say "yes" to him; and if he demanded grounds we might say "I can't give you any grounds, but if you learn more you too will think the same."”
On Certainty(1969)
Ludwig Wittgenstein on Life
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Attributed to Ludwig Wittgenstein:
“We feel that even when all possible scientific questions have been answered, the problems of life remain completely untouched.”
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“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.”
Culture and Value(1980) | p. 36e -
“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.”
Culture and Value(1980) | p. 41e -
“To believe in a God means to understand the question about the meaning of life. To believe in a God means to see that the facts of the world are not the end of the matter. To believe in God means to see that life has a meaning.”
Notebooks 1914-1916 | Journal entry (8 July 1916), p. 74e
Ludwig Wittgenstein on Love
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“Burning in effigy. Kissing the picture of one's beloved... it aims at nothing at all; we just behave this way and then we feel satisfied.”
Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951(1993) | Ch. 7 : Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough , p. 123
Ludwig Wittgenstein on Mind
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“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. -
“If a lion could speak, we could not understand him.”
Pt II, p. 223 of the 1968 English edition -
Attributed to Ludwig Wittgenstein:
“It is in language that an expectation and its fulfilment make contact.”
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“It seems to me as good as certain that we cannot get the upper hand against England . The English — the best race in the world — cannot lose! We, however, can lose and shall lose, if not this year then next year. The thought that our race is going to be beaten depresses me terribly, because I am completely German .”
Writing about the eventual outcome of World War I, in which he was a volunteer in the Austro-Hungarian army (25 October 1914), as quoted in The First World War (2004) by Martin Gilbert , p. 104 -
“Philosophy unravels the knots in our thinking ; hence its results must be simple, but its activity is as complicated as the knots that it unravels.”
Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951(1993) | Ch. 9 : Philosophy, p. 183 -
“Like everything metaphysical the harmony between thought and reality is to be found in the grammar of the language.”
Philosophical Investigations(1953) | § 112 -
“Does man think because he has found that thinking pays? Does he bring his children up because he has found it pays?”
Philosophical Investigations(1953) | § 467 -
“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.”
Philosophical Investigations(1953) | Pt II, p. 189
Ludwig Wittgenstein on Politics
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“Though a state of affairs that would contravene the laws of physics can be represented by us spatially, one that would contravene the laws of geometry cannot. (3.0321)”
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus(1922) | Original German: Wohl können wir einen Sachverhalt räumlich darstellen, welcher den Gesetzen der Physik, aber keinen, der den Gesetzen der Geometrie zuwiderliefe. -
“For remember that in general we don't use language according to strict rules — it hasn't been taught us by means of strict rules, either.”
The Blue Book(c. 1931–1935; published 1965) | p. 25 -
“To obey a rule, to make a report, to give an order, to play a game of chess , are customs (uses, institutions )”
Philosophical Investigations(1953) | § 199
Ludwig Wittgenstein on Time
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“One can mistrust one's own senses, but not one's own belief. If there were a verb meaning "to believe falsely," it would not have any significant first person, present indicative.”
Philosophical Investigations(1953) | Pt II, p. 162
Ludwig Wittgenstein on Truth
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“The world is everything that is the case.”
Original German: Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist . -
“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen. -
“What can be said at all can be said clearly, and whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent.”
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen. -
“One often makes a remark and only later sees how true it is.”
Journal entry (11 October 1914), p. 10e -
“It is quite impossible for a proposition to state that it itself is true. (4.442)”
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus(1922) | Original German: Ein Satz kann unmöglich von sich selbst aussagen, dass er wahr ist. -
“To convince someone of the truth, it is not enough to state it, but rather one must find the path from error to truth.”
Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951(1993) | Ch. 7 : Remarks on Frazer 's Golden Bough , p. 119 -
“If a false thought is so much as expressed boldly and clearly, a great deal has already been gained.”
Culture and Value(1980) | p. 86e -
“Propositions are truth-functions of elementary propositions. (An elementary proposition is a truth-function of itself.) (5)”
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus(1922) | Original German: Der Satz ist eine Wahrheitsfunktion der Elementarsätze
Things actually not said by Ludwig Wittgenstein
A number of widely-shared lines are circulated as Ludwig Wittgenstein but are in fact from someone else. Did Ludwig Wittgenstein say these? No. Each entry below pairs the line with the person who actually wrote it.
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Did Ludwig Wittgenstein say this? No.
“If we spoke a different language, we would perceive a somewhat different world.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: This actually first appears in Recent Experiments in Psychology (1950) by Leland Whitney Crafts, Théodore Christian Schneirla, and Elsa Elizabeth Robinson, where it is expressed:
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Did Ludwig Wittgenstein say this? No.
“The sole remaining task for philosophy is the analysis of language.”
Though this has been quoted extensively as if it were a statement of Wittgenstein, it was apparently first published in A Brief History of Time (1988) by Stephen Hawking , p. 175, where it is presented in quotation marks and thus easily interpreted to be a quotation, but could conceivably be Hawking paraphrasing or giving his own particular summation of Wittgenstein's ideas, as there seem to be no published sources of such a statement prior to this one. The full remark by Hawking reads: (Disputed.)
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Did Ludwig Wittgenstein say this? No.
“I can well understand why children love sand.”
Although this quote has been attributed to Wittgenstein in Wittgenstein's Mistress by David Markson, there is no verifiable source from Wittgenstein that it can be traced back to. (Disputed.)