Ludwig Wittgenstein - Quotes

There can never be surprises in logic.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig.

A confession has to be part of your new life.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig.

The riddle does not exist. If a question can be put at all, then it can also be answered.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig.

We could present spatially an atomic fact which contradicted the laws of physics, but not one which contradicted the laws of geometry.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig.

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.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig.

A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards; as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig.

A man's thinking goes on within his consciousness in a seclusion in comparison with which any physical seclusion is an exhibition to public view.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig.

An inner process stands in need of outward criteria.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig.

Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig.

What can be said at all can be said clearly; and whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig and Bertrand Russell (Contributer) and C.K. Ogden (Translator). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. in: Project Gutenberg. (Original Publication: 1921) Release Date: October 22, 2010.

The book will, therefore, draw a limit to thinking, or rather—not to thinking, but to the expression of thoughts; for, in order to draw a limit to thinking we should have to be able to think both sides of this limit (we should therefore have to be able to think what cannot be thought).
Wittgenstein, Ludwig and Bertrand Russell (Contributer) and C.K. Ogden (Translator). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. in: Project Gutenberg. (Original Publication: 1921) Release Date: October 22, 2010.

The world is the totality of facts, not of things.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig and Bertrand Russell (Contributer) and C.K. Ogden (Translator). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. in: Project Gutenberg. (Original Publication: 1921) Release Date: October 22, 2010.

Any one can either be the case or not be the case, and everything else remain the same.
What is the case, the fact, is the existence of atomic facts.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig and Bertrand Russell (Contributer) and C.K. Ogden (Translator). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. in: Project Gutenberg. (Original Publication: 1921) Release Date: October 22, 2010.

In logic nothing is accidental: if a thing can occur in an atomic fact the possibility of that atomic fact must already be prejudged in the thing.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig and Bertrand Russell (Contributer) and C.K. Ogden (Translator). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. in: Project Gutenberg. (Original Publication: 1921) Release Date: October 22, 2010.

It would, so to speak, appear as an accident, when to a thing that could exist alone on its own account, subsequently a state of affairs could be made to fit. If things can occur in atomic facts, this possibility must already lie in them.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig and Bertrand Russell (Contributer) and C.K. Ogden (Translator). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. in: Project Gutenberg. (Original Publication: 1921) Release Date: October 22, 2010.

Just as we cannot think of spatial objects at all apart from space, or temporal objects apart from time, so we cannot think of any object apart from the possibility of its connexion with other things. If I can think of an object in the context of an atomic fact, I cannot think of it apart from the possibility of this context.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig and Bertrand Russell (Contributer) and C.K. Ogden (Translator). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. in: Project Gutenberg. (Original Publication: 1921) Release Date: October 22, 2010.

If all objects are given, then thereby are all possible atomic facts also given. Every thing is, as it were, in a space of possible atomic facts. I can think of this space as empty, but not of the thing without the space.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig and Bertrand Russell (Contributer) and C.K. Ogden (Translator). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. in: Project Gutenberg. (Original Publication: 1921) Release Date: October 22, 2010.

The sense of a truth-function of p is a function of the sense of p. Denial, logical addition, logical multiplication, etc. etc., are operations. (Denial reverses the sense of a proposition.)
Wittgenstein, Ludwig and Bertrand Russell (Contributer) and C.K. Ogden (Translator). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. in: Project Gutenberg. (Original Publication: 1921) Release Date: October 22, 2010.

An operation shows itself in a variable; it shows how we can proceed from one form of proposition to another. It gives expression to the difference between the forms. (And that which is common to the bases, and the result of an operation, is the bases themselves.)
Wittgenstein, Ludwig and Bertrand Russell (Contributer) and C.K. Ogden (Translator). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. in: Project Gutenberg. (Original Publication: 1921) Release Date: October 22, 2010.

...no part of our experience is also a priori. Everything we see could also be otherwise. Everything we can describe at all could also be otherwise. There is no order of things a priori.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig and Bertrand Russell (Contributer) and C.K. Ogden (Translator). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. in: Project Gutenberg. (Original Publication: 1921) Release Date: October 22, 2010.

Here we see that solipsism strictly carried out coincides with pure realism. The I in solipsism shrinks to an extensionless point and there remains the reality co-ordinated with it.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig and Bertrand Russell (Contributer) and C.K. Ogden (Translator). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. in: Project Gutenberg. (Original Publication: 1921) Release Date: October 22, 2010.

The philosophical I is not the man, not the human body or the human soul of which psychology treats, but the metaphysical subject, the limit—not a part of the world.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig and Bertrand Russell (Contributer) and C.K. Ogden (Translator). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. in: Project Gutenberg. (Original Publication: 1921) Release Date: October 22, 2010.

The propositions of logic demonstrate the logical properties of propositions, by combining them into propositions which say nothing. This method could be called a zero-method.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig and Bertrand Russell (Contributer) and C.K. Ogden (Translator). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. in: Project Gutenberg. (Original Publication: 1921) Release Date: October 22, 2010.

If for example two propositions “p” and “q” give a tautology in the connexion “p  q”, then it is clear that q follows from p. E.g. that “q” follows from “p  q : p” we see from these two propositions themselves, but we can also show it by combining them to “p  q:p :: q” and then showing that this is a tautology.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig and Bertrand Russell (Contributer) and C.K. Ogden (Translator). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. in: Project Gutenberg. (Original Publication: 1921) Release Date: October 22, 2010.

This throws light on the question why logical propositions can no more be empirically established than they can be empirically refuted. Not only must a proposition of logic be incapable of being contradicted by any possible experience, but it must also be incapable of being established by any such. It now becomes clear why we often feel as though “logical truths” PHILOSOPHICUS must be “postulated” by us. We can in fact postulate them in so far as we can postulate an adequate notation.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig and Bertrand Russell (Contributer) and C.K. Ogden (Translator). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. in: Project Gutenberg. (Original Publication: 1921) Release Date: October 22, 2010.

We can imagine a world in which the axiom of reducibility is not valid. But it is clear that logic has nothing to do with the question whether our world is really of this kind or not.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig and Bertrand Russell (Contributer) and C.K. Ogden (Translator). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. in: Project Gutenberg. (Original Publication: 1921) Release Date: October 22, 2010.

Mechanics is an attempt to construct according to a single plan all true propositions which we need for the description of the world.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig and Bertrand Russell (Contributer) and C.K. Ogden (Translator). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. in: Project Gutenberg. (Original Publication: 1921) Release Date: October 22, 2010.

We must not forget that the description of the world by mechanics is always quite general. There is, for example, never any mention of particular material points in it, but always only of some points or other.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig and Bertrand Russell (Contributer) and C.K. Ogden (Translator). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. in: Project Gutenberg. (Original Publication: 1921) Release Date: October 22, 2010.

Philosophical problems are not solved by experience, for what we talk about in philosophy are not facts but things for which facts are useful. Philosophical trouble arises through seeing a system of rules and seeing that things do not fit it. It is like advancing and retreating from a tree stump and seeing different things. We go nearer, remember the rules, and feel satisfied, then retreat and feel dissatisfied.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig and Alice Ambrose (Editor). Wittgenstein's Lectures, Cambridge 1932-1935. Prometheus Books. March 2001. Paperback, 225 pages, Language English, ISBN: 1573928755.

Words and chess pieces are analogous; knowing how to use a word is like knowing how to move a chess piece. Now how do the rules enter into playing the game? What is the difference between playing the game and aimlessly moving the pieces? I do not deny there is a difference, but I want to say that knowing how a piece is to be used is not a particular state of mind which goes on while the game goes on. The meaning of a word is to be defined by the rules for its use, not by the feeling that attaches to the words.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig and Alice Ambrose (Editor). Wittgenstein's Lectures, Cambridge 1932-1935. Prometheus Books. March 2001. Paperback, 225 pages, Language English, ISBN: 1573928755.

The rules of grammar are entirely independent of one another. Two words have the same meaning if they have the same rules for their use.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig and Alice Ambrose (Editor). Wittgenstein's Lectures, Cambridge 1932-1935. Prometheus Books. March 2001. Paperback, 225 pages, Language English, ISBN: 1573928755.

Are the rules, for example, ~ ~ p = p for negation, responsible to the meaning of a word? No. The rules constitute the meaning, and are not responsible to it. The meaning changes when one of its rules changes. If, for example, the game of chess is defined in terms of its rules, one cannot say the game changes if a rule for moving a piece were changed. Only when we are speaking of the history of the game can we talk of change. Rules are arbitrary in the sense that they are not responsible to some sort of reality-they are not similar to natural laws; nor are they responsible to some meaning the word already has. If someone says the rules of negation are not arbitrary because negation could not be such that ~~p =~p, all that could be meant is that the latter rule would not correspond to the English word "negation".
Wittgenstein, Ludwig and Alice Ambrose (Editor). Wittgenstein's Lectures, Cambridge 1932-1935. Prometheus Books. March 2001. Paperback, 225 pages, Language English, ISBN: 1573928755.

Although the spots in our picture are geometrical figures, geometry can obviously say nothing about their actual form and position. But the network is purely geometrical, and all its properties can be given a priori. Laws, like the law of causation, etc., treat of the network and not of what the network described.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig and Alice Ambrose (Editor). Wittgenstein's Lectures, Cambridge 1932-1935. Prometheus Books. March 2001. Paperback, 225 pages, Language English, ISBN: 1573928755.

Logic proceeds from premises just as physics does. But the primitive propositions of physics are results of very general experience, while those of logic are not. To distinguish between the propositions of physics and those of logic, more must be done than to produce predicates such as experiential and self-evident. It must be shown that a grammatical rule holds for one and not for the other.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig and Alice Ambrose (Editor). Wittgenstein's Lectures, Cambridge 1932-1935. Prometheus Books. March 2001. Paperback, 225 pages, Language English, ISBN: 1573928755.

In what sense are laws of inference laws of thought? Can a reason be given for thinking as we do? Will this require an answer outside the game of reasoning? There are two senses of "reason": reason for, and cause. These are two different orders of things. One needs to decide on a criterion for something's being a reason before reason and cause can be distinguished. Reasoning is the calculation actually done, and a reason goes back one step in the calculus. A reason is a reason only inside the game.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig and Alice Ambrose (Editor). Wittgenstein's Lectures, Cambridge 1932-1935. Prometheus Books. March 2001. Paperback, 225 pages, Language English, ISBN: 1573928755.

To give a reason is to go through a process of calculation, and to ask for a reason is to ask how one arrived at the result. The chain of reasons comes to an end, that is, one cannot always give a reason for a reason. But this does not make the reasoning less valid. The answer to the question, Why are you frightened?, involves a hypothesis if a cause is given. But there is no hypothetical element in a calculation.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig and Alice Ambrose (Editor). Wittgenstein's Lectures, Cambridge 1932-1935. Prometheus Books. March 2001. Paperback, 225 pages, Language English, ISBN: 1573928755.

To do a thing for a certain reason may mean several things. When a person gives as his reason for entering a room that there is a lecture, how does one know that is his reason? The reason may be nothing more than just the one he gives when asked. Again, a reason may be the way one arrives at a conclusion, e.g., when one multiplies 13 x 25. It is a calculation, and is the justification for the result 325. The reason for fixing a date might consist in a man's going through a game of checking his diary and finding a free time. The reason here might be said to be included in the act he performs. A cause could not be included in this sense.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig and Alice Ambrose (Editor). Wittgenstein's Lectures, Cambridge 1932-1935. Prometheus Books. March 2001. Paperback, 225 pages, Language English, ISBN: 1573928755.

We are talking here of the grammar of the words "reason" and "cause": in what cases do we say we have given a reason for doing a certain thing, and in what cases, a cause? If one answers the question 'Why did you move your arm?' by giving a behaviouristic explanation, one has specified a cause. Causes may be discovered by experiments, but experiments do not produce reasons. The word 'reason' is not used in connection with experimentation. It is senseless to say a reason is found by experiment. The alternative, 'mathematical argument or experiential evidence?' corresponds to 'reason or cause?'
Wittgenstein, Ludwig and Alice Ambrose (Editor). Wittgenstein's Lectures, Cambridge 1932-1935. Prometheus Books. March 2001. Paperback, 225 pages, Language English, ISBN: 1573928755.

What "existence" means is determined by the proof. The end-result of a proof is not isolated from the proof but is like the end surface of a solid. It is organically connected with the proof which is its body.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig and Alice Ambrose (Editor). Wittgenstein's Lectures, Cambridge 1932-1935. Prometheus Books. March 2001. Paperback, 225 pages, Language English, ISBN: 1573928755.

Suppose that at certain intervals situations repeated themselves, and that someone said time was circular. Would this be right or wrong? Neither. It would only be another way of expression, and we could just as well talk of a circular time. However, the picture of time as flowing, as having a direction, is one that suggests itself very vigorously.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig and Alice Ambrose (Editor). Wittgenstein's Lectures, Cambridge 1932-1935. Prometheus Books. March 2001. Paperback, 225 pages, Language English, ISBN: 1573928755.

'Time' as a substantive is terribly misleading. We have got to make the rules of the game before we play it. Discussion of 'the flow of time' shows how philosophical problems arise. Philosophical troubles are caused by not using language practically but by extending it on looking at it. We form sentences and then wonder what they can mean. Once conscious of 'time' as a substantive, we ask then about the creation of time.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig and Alice Ambrose (Editor). Wittgenstein's Lectures, Cambridge 1932-1935. Prometheus Books. March 2001. Paperback, 225 pages, Language English, ISBN: 1573928755.