"When one is frightened of the truth then it is never the whole truth that one has an inkling of."
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Ludwig Wittgenstein quotes (page 10 of 18)
347 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"The Christian religion is only for one who needs infinite help, therefore only for one who feels an infinite need. The whole planet cannot be in greater anguish than a single soul. The Christian faith - as I view it - is the refuge in this ultimate anguish. To whom it is given in this anguish to open his heart, instead of contracting it, accepts the means of salvation in his heart."
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"Think of words as instruments characterized by their use, and then think of the use of a hammer, the use of a chisel, the use of a square, of a glue pot, and of the glue."
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"It is not humanly possible to gather immediately from it what the logic of language is. Language disguises thought."
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"Mathematics is a logical method. . . . Mathematical propositions express no thoughts. In life it is never a mathematical proposition which we need, but we use mathematical propositions only in order to infer from propositions which do not belong to mathematics to others which equally do not belong to mathematics."
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"We must do away with all explanation, and description alone must take its place."
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"When philosophers use a word--"knowledge," "being," "object," "I," "proposition," "name"--and try to grasp the essence of the thing, one must always ask oneself: is the word ever actually used in this way in the language-game which is its original home?--What we do is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use."
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"A picture is a model of reality."
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"Philosophy just puts everything before us, and neither explains nor deduces anything.-Since everything lies open to view there is nothing to explain"
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"Nothing is more important for teaching us to understand the concepts we have than to construct fictitious ones."
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"Don't think, but look! (PI 66)"
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"When I obey a rule, I do not choose. I obey the rule blindly ."
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"Philosophy can be said to consist of three activities: to see the commonsense answer, to get yourself so deeply into the problem that the common sense answer is unbearable, and to get from that situation back to the commonsense answer."
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"There is no criterion by which to recognize what is a color, except that it is one of our colors."
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"Philosophy aims at the logical clarification of thoughts. Philosophy is not a body of doctrine but an activity. A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations."
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"A good guide will take you through the more important streets more often than he takes you down side streets; a bad guide will do the opposite. In philosophy I'm a rather bad guide."
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"A picture whose pictorial form is logical form is called a logical picture."
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"For remember that in general we don't use language according to strict rules-- it hasn't been taught to us by means of strict rules, either. We, in our discussions on the other hand, constantly compare language with a calculus preceding to exact rules."
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"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."
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"You get tragedy where the tree, instead of bending, breaks."
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