"At the core of all well-founded belief lies belief that is unfounded."
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Quote collection
Ludwig Wittgenstein quotes (page 9 of 18)
347 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"A mathematical proof must be perspicuous."
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"Man feels the urge to run up against the limits of language. Think for example of the astonishment that anything at all exists. This astonishment cannot be expressed in the form of a question, and there is also no answer whatsoever. Anything we might say is a priori bound to be nonsense. Nevertheless we do run up against the limits of language. Kierkegaard too saw that there is this running up against something, and he referred to it in a fairly similar way (as running up against paradox). This running up against the limits of language is ethics."
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"Not only is there no guarantee of the temporal immortality of the human soul, that is to say of its eternal survival after death; but, in any case, this assumption completely fails to accomplish the purpose for which it has always been intended. Or is some riddle solved by my surviving forever? Is not this eternal life itself as much of a riddle as our present life?"
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"Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death."
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"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."
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"One often makes a remark and only later sees how true it is."
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"The philosophical I is not the human being, not the human body or the human soul with the psychological properties, but the metaphysical subject, the boundary (not a part) of the world."
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"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."
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"What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence."
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"Where does our investigation get its importance from, since it seems only to destroy everything interesting, that is, all that is great and important? (As it were all the buildings, leaving behind only bits of stone and rubble.) What we are destroying is nothing but houses of cards and we are clearing up the ground of language on which they stand."
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"The totality of facts determines both what is the case, and also all that is not the case."
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"The real discovery is the one which enables me to stop doing philosophy when I want to. The one that gives philosophy peace, so that it is no longer tormented by questions which bring itself into question."
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"You must always be puzzled by mental illness. The thing I would dread most, if I became mentally ill, would be your adopting a common sense attitude; that you could take it for granted that I was deluded."
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"Schiller writes in a letter [to Goethe, 17 December 1795] of a 'poetic mood'. I think I know what he means, I think I am familiar with it myself. It is the mood of receptivity to nature and one in which one's thoughts seem as vivid as nature itself."
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"I act with complete certainty. But this certainty is my own."
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"We feel that even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all."
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"Someone who knows too much finds it hard not to lie."
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"Our greatest stupidities may be very wise."
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"The difficulty in philosophy is to say no more than we know."
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