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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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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
Thoughts
Aims
Philosophy
Consists
Body
Essentially
Work
Logical
Aim
Doctrine
Philosophical
Activity
Clarification
More quotes by Ludwig Wittgenstein
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
There can never be surprises in logic.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Religion is, as it were, the calm bottom of the sea at its deepest point, which remains calm however high the waves on the surface may be.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
If you use a trick in logic, whom can you be tricking other than yourself?
Ludwig Wittgenstein
We could present spatially an atomic fact which contradicted the laws of physics, but not one which contradicted the laws of geometry.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
I am showing my pupils details of an immense landscape which they cannot possibly know their way around.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
The world of those who are happy is different from the world of those who are not.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
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
A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
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
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
All mathematics is tautology.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
So we do sometimes think because it has been found to pay.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
We must do away with all explanation, and description alone must take its place.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
If we spoke a different language, we would perceive a somewhat different world.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
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.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
I am sitting with a philosopher in the garden he says again and again 'I know that that’s a tree', pointing to a tree that is near us. Someone else arrives and hears this, and I tell him: 'This fellow isn’t insane. We are only doing philosophy.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
What should we gain by a definition, as it can only lead us to other undefined terms?
Ludwig Wittgenstein
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
