But some of the greatest achievements in philosophy could only be compared with taking up some books which seemed to belong together, and putting them on different shelves; nothing more being final about their positions...

If someone does not believe in fairies, he does not need to teach his children ‘There are no fairies’; he can omit to teach them the word ‘fairy’.

The agreement or disagreement or its sense with reality constitutes its truth or falsity.

The work of art is the object seen sub specie aeternitatis; and the good life is the world seen sub specie aeternitatis. This is the connection between art and ethics.The usual way of looking at...

Don’t for heaven’s sake, be afraid of talking nonsense! But you must pay attention to your nonsense.

A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably.

Belief in the causal nexus is superstition.

There are two godheads: the world and my independent I. I am either happy or unhappy, that is all. It can be said: good or evil do not exist. A man who is happy must...

The right method of philosophy would be this. To say nothing except what can be said, i.e. the propositions of natural science, i.e. something that has nothing to do with philosophy: and then always, when...

Telling someone something he does not understand is pointless, even if you add that he will not be able to understand it.

A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.

The truly apocalyptic view of the world is that things do not repeat themselves. It isn’t absurd, e.g., to believe that the age of science and technology is the beginning of the end for humanity;...

The gramophone record, the musical thought, the score, the waves of sound, all stand to one another in that pictorial internal relation, which holds between language and the world.To all of them the logical structure...

Most of the propositions and questions to be found in philosophical works are not false but nonsensical.

Superstition is the belief in the causal nexus.

I act with complete certainty. But this certainty is my own.

The problems are solved, not by giving new information, but by arranging what we have known since long.

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.

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

Music conveys to us itself!

For remember that in general we don’t use language according to strict rules– it hasn’t been taught to us by means of strict rules, either. We, in our discussions on the other hand, constantly compare...

Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly. Everything that can be said can be said clearly.

It is obvious that an imagined world, however different it may be from the real one, must have something – a form – in common with it.

If you tried to doubt everything you would not get as far as doubting anything. The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty.

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.

One age misunderstands another; and a petty age misunderstands all the others in its own nasty way.

The real question of life after death isn’t whether or not it exists, but even if it does what problem this really solves.

Getting hold of the difficulty deep down is what is hard. Because if it is grasped near the surface it simply remains the difficulty it was. It has to be pulled out by the roots;...

Some people’s taste is to an educated taste as is the visual impression received by a purblind eye to that of a normal eye. Where a normal eye will see something clearly articulated, a weak...

6.4311Der Tod ist kein Ereignis des Lebens. Den Tod erlebt man nicht.Wenn man unter Ewigkeit nicht unendliche Zeitdauer, sondern Unzeitlichkeit versteht, dann lebt der ewig, der in der Gegenwart lebt.Unser Leben ist ebenso endlos, wie...

Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination.

Logic takes care of itself; all we have to do is to look and see how it does it.

If you and I are to live religious lives, it mustn’t be that we talk a lot about religion, but that our manner of life is different. It is my belief that only if you...

Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.

I am my world.

A picture of a complete apple tree, however accurate, is in a certain sense much less like the tree itself than is a little daisy.

476. Children do not learn that books exist, that armchairs exist, etc.,etc. – they learn to fetch books, sit in armchairs, etc.,etc.Later, questions about the existence of things do of course arise, “Is there such...

Der Zweck der Philosophie ist die logische Klärung der Gedanken.Die Philosophie ist keine Lehre, sondern eine Tätigkeit.Ein philosophisches Werk besteht wesentlich aus Erläuterungen.Das Resultat der Philosophie sind nicht »philosophische Sätze«, sondern das Klarwerden von Sätzen.Die...

The limits of my language means the limits of my world.

There can never be surprises in logic.

Concerning that which cannot be talked about, we should not say anything.

Roughly speaking: to say of two things that they are identical is nonsense, and to say of one thing that it is identical with itself is to say nothing.

How small a thought it takes to fill a life.

Put a man in the wrong atmosphere and nothing will function as it should. He will seem unhealthy in every part. Put him back into his proper element and everything will blossom and look healthy....

Hell isn’t other people. Hell is yourself.

Language disguises thought.

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...

But all propositions of logic say the same thing. That is, nothing.

I think one of the things you and I have to learn is that we have to live without the consolation of belonging to a Church….Of one thing I am certain. The religion of the...

If you have a room which you do not want certain people to get into, put a lock on it for which they do not have the key. But there is no point in talking...