Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889 – 1951)
Austrian-born philosopher who spent much of his life in England.
You won't — I really believe — get too much out of reading it. Because you won't understand it; the content will seem strange to you. In reality, it isn't strange to you, for the point is ethical. I once wanted to give a few words in the foreword which now actually are not in it, which, however, I'll write to you now because they might be a key for you: I wanted to write that my work consists of two parts: of the one which is here, and of everything which I have not written. And precisely this second part is the important one.
The world is the totality of facts, not things. (1.1)
Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of our language.
"Fare well!"
" A whole world of pain is contained in these words." How can it be contained in them? — It is bound up in them. The words are like an acorn from which an oak tree can grow.
The sole remaining task for philosophy is the analysis of language.
The meaning of a question is the method of answering it: then what is the meaning of 'Do two men really mean the same by the word "white"?' Tell me how you are searching, and I will tell you what you are searching for.
I read: "philosophers are no nearer to the meaning of 'Reality' than Plato got,...". What a strange situation. How extraordinary that Plato could have got even as far as he did! Or that we could not get any further! Was it because Plato was so extremely clever?
What is the case, the fact, is the existence of atomic facts. (2)
The world is all that is the case. (1)
Man könnte sagen: „Genie ist Mut im Talent.”
Human beings have a physical need to tell themselves when at work: “Let’s have done with it now,” and it’s having constantly to go on thinking in the face of this need when philosophizing that makes this work so strenuous.
For a truly religious man nothing is tragic.
One often makes a remark and only later sees how true it is.
Why in the world shouldn't they have regarded with awe and reverence that act by which the human race is perpetuated. Not every religion has to have St. Augustine's attitude to sex. Why even in our culture marriages are celebrated in a church, everyone present knows what is going to happen that night, but that doesn't prevent it being a religious ceremony.
Knowledge is in the end based on acknowledgement.
A hero looks death in the face, real death, not just the image of death. Behaving honourably in a crisis doesn't mean being able to act the part of a hero well, as in the theatre, it means being able to look death itself in the eye.
For an actor may play lots of different roles, but at the end of it all he himself, the human being, is the one who has to die.
[He was] a magician and had qualities of magic in his relations with people.
Tell them I've had a wonderful life.
Logic takes care of itself; all we have to do is to look and see how it does it.
Is it just I who cannot found a school, or can a philosopher never do so?