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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.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

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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
Others
Mathematical
Order
Belong
Need
Math
Needs
Express
Infer
Never
Mathematics
Proposition
Life
Method
Propositions
Thoughts
Logical
Use
Equally

More quotes by Ludwig Wittgenstein

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Concerning that which cannot be talked about, we should not say anything.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
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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.
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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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My day passes between logic, whistling, going for walks, and being depressed. I wish to God that I were more intelligent and everything would finally become clear to me - or else that I needn't live much longer.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
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Sometimes, in doing philosophy, one just wants to utter an inarticulate sound.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
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A confession has to be part of your new life.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
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Philosophy is like trying to open a safe with a combination lock: each little adjustment of the dials seems to achieve nothing, only when everything is in place does the door open.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
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Language is a part of our organism and no less complicated than it.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
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The world divides into facts.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
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The totality of facts determines both what is the case, and also all that is not the case.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
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Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
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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.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
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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.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
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For life in the present there is no death. Death is not an event in life. It is not a fact in the world.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
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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.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
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Philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday
Ludwig Wittgenstein
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Someone who knows too much finds it hard not to lie.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
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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.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
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Frazer is much more savage than most of his savages, for they are not as far removed from the understanding of spiritual matter as a twentieth-century Englishman. His explanations of primitive practices are much cruder than the meaning of these practices themselves.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
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This sort of thing has got to be stopped. Bad philosophers are like slum landlords. It's my job to put them out of business.
Ludwig Wittgenstein