Quote

If suicide is allowed then everything is allowed. If anything is not allowed then suicide is not allowed. This throws a light on the nature of ethics, for suicide is, so to speak, the elementary sin. And when one investigates it it is like investigating mercury vapour in order to comprehend the nature of vapours.

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
Speak
Mercury
Order
Elementary
Nature
Throws
Light
Comprehend
Anything
Suicide
Vapours
Everything
Ethics
Investigates
Like
Allowed
Vapour
Sin
Investigating

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We must do away with all explanation, and description alone must take its place.
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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.
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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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The world divides into facts.
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And to imagine a language means to imagine a form of life.
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When I obey a rule, I do not choose. I obey the rule blindly .
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Ethics and aesthetics are one.
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Philosophy can be said to consist of three activities: to see the commonsense answer, to get yourself so deeply into the problem that the common sense answer is unbearable, and to get from that situation back to the commonsense answer.
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You might say that certain words are only pegs to hang intonations on.
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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.
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We find certains things about seeing puzzling, because we do not find the whole business of seeing puzzling enough.
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Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death.
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One age misunderstands another and a petty age misunderstands all the others in its own ugly way.
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Is it even always an advantage to replace an indistinct picture by a sharp one? Isn't the indistinct one often what we need?
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We must plow through the whole of language.
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Logic is not a body of doctrine, but a mirror-image of the world. Logic is transcendental.
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Talent is a spring from which fresh water always flows.- But this spring is worthless if no good use is made of it.
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You learned the concept 'pain' when you learned language.
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Never stay up on the barren heights of cleverness, but come down into the green valleys of silliness.
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This is how philosophers should salute each other: ‘Take your time.
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