Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
A wheel that can be turned though nothing else moves with it, is not a part of the mechanism.
Only when one thinks even much more madly than the philosophers can one solve their problems.
Kierkegaard was by far the most profound thinker of the last century. Kierkegaard was a saint.
Because our goals are not lofty but illusory, our problems are not difficult, but nonsensical.
There is not a philosophical method, though there are indeed methods, like different therapies.
It's only by thinking even more crazily than philosophers do that you can solve their problems.
What is left over if I subtract the fact that my arms goes up from the fact that I raise my arm?
When one is frightened of the truth then it is never the whole truth that one has an inkling of.
If the will did not exist, neither would there be that centre of the world, which we call the I.
Where our language suggests a body and there is none: there, we should like to say, is a spirit.
A philosopher who is not taking part in discussions is like a boxer who never goes into the ring.
There is no criterion by which to recognize what is a color, except that it is one of our colors.
The philosopher is not a citizen of any community of ideas, that is what makes him a philosopher.
That which cannot be said must not be said. That which cannot be said, one must be silent thereof.
One age misunderstands another; and a petty age misunderstands all the others in its own ugly way.
One of the most misleading representational techniques in our language is the use of the word 'I.'
If God had looked into our minds he would not have been able to see there whom we were speaking of.
The problems are solved, not by giving new information, but by arranging what we have always known.
Only let's cut out the transcendental twaddle when the whole thing is as plain as a sock on the jaw.
If a false thought is so much as expressed boldly and clearly, a great deal has already been gained.
Don't for heaven's sake, be afraid of talking nonsense! But you must pay attention to your nonsense.
Never stay up on the barren heights of cleverness, but come down into the green valleys of silliness.
A propositional sign, applied and thought out, is a thought. A thought is a proposition with a sense.
Suppose someone were to say: 'Imagine this butterfly exactly as it is, but ugly instead of beautiful'?!
Philosophy may in no way interfere with the actual use of language; it can in the end only describe it.
We are asleep. Our Life is a dream. But we wake up sometimes, just enough to know that we are dreaming.
My aim is: to teach you to pass from a piece of disguised nonsense to something that is patent nonsense.
Man has to awaken to wonder - and so perhaps do peoples. Science is a way of sending him to sleep again.
I am showing my pupils details of an immense landscape which they cannot possibly know their way around.
Most of the propositions and questions to be found in philosophical works are not false but nonsensical.
Courage, not cleverness; not even inspiration, is the grain of mustard that grows up to be a great tree.
My attitude towards him is an attitude towards a soul. I am not of the opinion that he has a soul. . . .
For life in the present there is no death. Death is not an event in life. It is not a fact in the world.
What signs fail to express, their application shows. What signs slur over, their application says clearly.
What Copernicus really achieved was not the discovery of a true theory but of a fertile new point of view.
Philosophy, as we use the word, is a fight against the fascination which forms of expression exert upon us.
The common behavior of mankind is the system of reference by means of which we interpret an unknown language.
It is an hypothesis that the sun will rise tomorrow: and this means that we do not know whether it will rise.
The classifications made by philosophers and psychologists are like trying to classify clouds by their shape.
Nothing is more important for teaching us to understand the concepts we have than to construct fictitious ones.
It is one of the chief skills of the philosopher not to occupy himself with questions which do not concern him.
This procedure [selecting the simplest law], however, has no logical justification but only a psychological one.
Nothing is more important than the formation of fictional concepts, which teach us at last to understand our own.
The aspects of a thing that are most important to us are hidden to us because of their simplicity and familiarity.
There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.
We find certains things about seeing puzzling, because we do not find the whole business of seeing puzzling enough.
It is not humanly possible to gather immediately from it what the logic of language is. Language disguises thought.
Like everything metaphysical the harmony between thought and reality is to be found in the grammar of the language.
Talent is a spring from which fresh water always flows.- But this spring is worthless if no good use is made of it.
To understand a sentence means to understand a language. To understand a language means to be master of a technique.