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Quotes from Culture and Value — Ludwig Wittgenstein

1889–1951 Austria

← All quotes by Ludwig Wittgenstein

61 quotes

"I never believed in God before." — that I understand. But not: "I never really believed in Him before."

Culture and Value (1980)

It's only by thinking even more crazily than philosophers do that you can solve their problems.

Culture and Value (1980)

If you use a trick in logic, whom can you be tricking other than yourself?

Culture and Value (1980)

A new word is like a fresh seed sown on the ground of the discussion.

Culture and Value (1980)

Someone who knows too much finds it hard not to lie.

Culture and Value (1980)

Our greatest stupidities may be very wise.

Culture and Value (1980)

Aim at being loved without being admired.

Culture and Value (1980)

Reading the Socratic dialogues one has the feeling: what a frightful waste of time! What's the point of these arguments that prove nothing and clarify nothing?

Culture and Value (1980)

Nothing is more important than the formation of fictional concepts, which teach us at last to understand our own.

Culture and Value (1980)

There is no religious denomination in which so much sin has been committed through the misuse of metaphorical expressions as in mathematics.

Culture and Value (1977)

Wisdom is passionless. But faith by contrast is what Kierkegaard calls a passion.

Culture and Value (1980)

I sit astride life like a bad rider on a horse. I only owe it to the horse's good nature that I am not thrown off at this very moment.

Culture and Value (1980)

Animals come when their names are called. Just like human beings.

Culture and Value (1980)

I believe that one of the things Christianity says is that sound doctrines are all useless. That you have to change your life. (Or the direction of your life.)

Culture and Value (1980)

I am showing my pupils details of an immense landscape which they cannot possibly know their way around.

Culture and Value (1980)

I squander untold effort making an arrangement of my thoughts that may have no value whatever.

Culture and Value (1980)

I think I summed up my attitude to philosophy when I said: philosophy ought really to be written only as a poetic composition.

Culture and Value (1980)

Ambition is the death of thought.

Culture and Value (1980)

Resting on your laurels is as dangerous as resting when you are walking in the snow. You doze off and die in your sleep.

Culture and Value (1980)

The less somebody knows and understands himself the less great he is, however great may be his talent. For this reason our scientists are not great.

Culture and Value (1980)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Ludwig Wittgenstein (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.