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We must do away with all explanation, and description alone must take its place.

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
Take
Must
Description
Explanation
Alone
Away
Place

More quotes by Ludwig Wittgenstein

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Someone who knows too much finds it hard not to lie.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
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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
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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.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
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The philosopher is not a citizen of any community of ideas, that is what makes him a philosopher.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
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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.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
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Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
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What can be shown, cannot be said.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
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Philosophy, as we use the word, is a fight against the fascination which forms of expression exert upon us.
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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If in life we are surrounded by death, so too in the health of our intellect by madness.
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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To believe in God is to see that life has a meaning.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
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There can never be surprises in logic.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
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Our civilization is characterized by the word progress. Progress is its form rather than making progress being one of its features. Typically it constructs. It is occupied with building an ever more complicated structure. And even clarity is sought only.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
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Everything that can be said, can be said clearly.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
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All mathematics is tautology.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
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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.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
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I'm doing philosophy like an old woman, first I'm looking for my pencil, then I'm looking for my glasses, then I'm looking for my pencil again.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
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At the end of reasons comes persuasion.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
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I sit astride life like a bad rider on a horse. I only owe it to the horse's good nature that I am not thrown off at this very moment.
Ludwig Wittgenstein