There is a truth in Schopenhauer’s view that philosophy is an organism, and that a book on philosophy, with a beginning and end, is a sort of contradiction. … In philosophy matters are not simple...

It is not humanly possible to gather immediately from it what the logic of language is. Language disguises thought.

The solution of logical problems must be neat for they set the standard of neatness.

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.

I give no sources, because it is indifferent to mewhether what I have thought has already beenthought before me by another.

Not how the world is, but that it is, is the mystery.

The mystical is not how the world is, but that it is.

If you already have a person’s love no sacrifice can be too much to give for it; but any sacrifice is too great to buy it for you.

The sole remaining task for philosophy is the analysis of language.

An entire mythology is stored within our language.

Talent is a spring from which fresh water is constantly flowing. But this spring loses its value if it is not used in the right way.

I don’t know why we are here, but I’m pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.

I really do think with my pen, because my head often knows nothing about what my hand is writing.

Philosophy should make clear and delimit sharply the thoughts which otherwise are, as it were, opaque and blurred.

What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.

The limits of your language are the limits of your world.

Most propositions and questions, that have been written about philosophical matters, are not false, but senseless. … (They are of the same kind as the question whether the Good is more or less identical than...

In philosophy it is always good to put a question instead of an answer to a question. For an answer to the philosophical question may easily be unfair; disposing of it by means of another...

Language is a labyrinth of paths. You approach from one side and know your way about; you approach the same place from another side and no longer know your way about.

We regard the photograph, the picture on our wall, as the object itself (the man, landscape, and so on) depicted there. This need not have been so. We could easily imagine people who did not...

We feel that even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all.

Ideas too sometimes fall from the tree before they are ripe.

It is difficult to describe paths of thought where there are already many paths laid down, and not fall into one of the grooves

Don’t think, but look! (PI 66)

It used to be said that God could create anything except what would be contrary to the laws of logic. The truth is that we could not say what an “illogical” world would look like.

You must always be puzzled by mental illness. The thing I would dread most, if I became mentally ill, would be your adopting a common sense attitude; that you could take it for granted that...

Perhaps what is inexpressible (what I find mysterious and am not able to express) is the background against which whatever I could express has its meaning.

The silent adjustments to understand colloquial language are enormously complicated.

Knowledge is in the end based on acknowledgement.

People nowadays think that scientists exist to instruct them, poets, musicians, etc. to give them pleasure. The idea that these have something to teach them – that does not occur to them.

Everything ritualistic must be strictly avoided, because it immediately turns rotten. Of course a kiss is a ritual too and it isn’t rotten, but ritual is permissible only to the extent that it is as...

An honest religious thinker is like a tightrope walker. He almost looks as though he were walking on nothing but air. His support is the slenderest imaginable. And yet it really is possible to walk...

At the core of all well-founded belief lies belief that is unfounded.

Christianity is not a doctrine, not, I mean, a theory about what has happened & will happen to the human soul, but a description of something that actually takes place in human life.

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.