Quote

We find certains things about seeing puzzling, because we do not find the whole business of seeing puzzling enough.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Ludwig Wittgenstein
Age: 62 †
Born: 1889
Born: April 26
Died: 1951
Died: April 29
Aphorist
Architectural Theoretician
Epistemologist
Logician
Mathematician
Philosopher
Philosopher Of Language
Professor
Teacher
Vienna
Austria
Puzzling
Seeing
Business
Find
Whole
Enough
Things

More quotes by Ludwig Wittgenstein

Image
Nothing is more important for teaching us to understand the concepts we have than to construct fictitious ones.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Image
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.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Image
Not how the world is, but that it is, is the mystery.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Image
When you are philosophizing you have to descend into primeval chaos and feel at home there.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Image
Not every religion has to have St. Augustine's attitude to sex. Why even in our culture marriages are celebrated in a church, everyone present knows what is going to happen that night, but that doesn't prevent it being a religious ceremony.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Image
Nothing is more important than the formation of fictional concepts, which teach us at last to understand our own.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Image
That the world is, is the mystical.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Image
Black seems to make a colour cloudy, but darkness doesn't. A ruby could thus keep getting darker without ever becoming cloudy but if it became blackish red, it would become cloudy.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Image
There is no criterion by which to recognize what is a color, except that it is one of our colors.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Image
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.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Image
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.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Image
What signs fail to express, their application shows. What signs slur over, their application says clearly.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Image
Genius is what makes us forget the master's talent.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Image
To believe in God is to see that life has a meaning.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Image
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.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Image
If you want to go down deep you do not need to travel far indeed, you don't have to leave your most immediate and familiar surroundings.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Image
Elementary propositions consist of names.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Image
This is how philosophers should salute each other: ‘Take your time.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Image
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.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Image
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.
Ludwig Wittgenstein