Quote

For a large class of cases - though not for all - in which we employ the word meaning it can be explained thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language.

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
Defined
Language
Thus
Use
Large
Meaning
Cases
Class
Employ
Word
Explained
Though

More quotes by Ludwig Wittgenstein

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So we do sometimes think because it has been found to pay.
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The eternal life is given to those who live in the present.
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It is possible--indeed possible even according to the old conception of logic--to give in advance a description of all 'true' logical propositions. Hence there can never be surprises in logic.
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All philosophy is a 'critique of language' (though not in Mauthner's sense). It was Russell who performed the service of showing that the apparent logical form of a proposition need not be its real one.
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If I have exhausted the justifications, I have reached bedrock and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say: 'This is simply what I do.
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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.
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Language disguises the thought so that from the external form of the clothes one cannot infer the form of the thought they clothe, because the external form of the clothes is constructed with quite another object than to let the form of the body be recognized.
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Always get rid of theory private object in this way: assume that it constantly changes, but that you do not notice the change because your memory constantly deceives you.
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Everything that can be said, can be said clearly.
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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.
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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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Don't ask what it means, but rather how it is used.
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Language disguises thought.
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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.
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A picture whose pictorial form is logical form is called a logical picture.
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If you use a trick in logic, whom can you be tricking other than yourself?
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With my full philosophical rucksack I can only climb slowly up the mountain of mathematics.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
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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.
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If, for example, you were to think more deeply about death, then it would be truly strange if, in so doing, you did not encounter new images.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
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One can defend common sense against the attacks of philosophers only by solving their puzzles, i.e., by curing them of the temptation to attack common sense.
Ludwig Wittgenstein