192 quotes
Frazer is much more savage than most of his savages, for they are not as far removed from the understanding of spiritual matter as a twentieth-century Englishman. His explanations of primitive practices are much cruder than the meaning of these practices themselves.
Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951 (1993)
To obey a rule, to make a report, to give an order, to play a game of chess, are customs (uses, institutions)
Philosophical Investigations (1953)
Burning in effigy. Kissing the picture of one's beloved... it aims at nothing at all; we just behave this way and then we feel satisfied.
Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951 (1993)
If a person tells me he has been to the worst places I have no reason to judge him; but if he tells me it was his superior wisdom that enabled him to go there, then I know he is a fraud.
Personal Recollections (1981)
"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.
Culture and Value (1980)
One might say: art shows us the miracles of nature. It is based on the concept of the miracles of nature.
Culture and Value (1980)
I am my world. (The microcosm.)
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922)
Nicht wie die Welt ist, ist das Mystische, sondern dass sie ist.
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922)
If I have exhausted the justifications, I have reached bedrock and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say: "This is simply what I do."
Philosophical Investigations (1953)
At the end of reasons comes persuasion.
On Certainty (1969)
When I obey a rule, I do not choose.
I obey the rule blindly.
Philosophical Investigations (1953)
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.
Culture and Value (1980)
The World and Life are one. Physiological life is of course not "Life". And neither is psychological life. Life is the world.
Ethics does not treat of the world. Ethics must be a condition of the world, like logic.
Ethics and Aesthetics are one.
You could attach prices to ideas. Some cost a lot some little. ... And how do you pay for ideas? I believe: with courage.
Culture and Value (1980)
A tautology's truth is certain, a proposition's possible, a contradiction's impossible. (Certain, possible, impossible: here we have the first indication of the scale that we need in the theory of probability.)
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922)
Schiller writes in a letter [to Goethe, 17 December 1795] of a ‘poetic mood’. I think I know what he means, I think I am familiar with it myself. It is the mood of receptivity to nature and one in which one's thoughts seem as vivid as nature itself.
Culture and Value (1980)
The World and Life are one. … Ethics and Aesthetics are one.
The world and life are one.
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922)
But if you say: "How am I to know what he means, when I see nothing but the signs he gives?" then I say: "How is he to know what he means, when he has nothing but the signs either?"
Philosophical Investigations (1953)
I work quite diligently and wish that I were better and smarter. And these both are one and the same.
In a letter to Paul Engelmann (1917)