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Quotes from Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951 — Ludwig Wittgenstein

1889–1951 Austria

← All quotes by Ludwig Wittgenstein

19 quotes

Frazer's account of the magical and religious views of mankind is unsatisfactory; it makes these views look like errors.

Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951 (1993)

What has to be overcome is not difficulty of the intellect but of the will.

Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951 (1993)

Every explanation is after all an hypothesis.

Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951 (1993)

People are deeply imbedded in philosophical, i.e., grammatical confusions. And to free them presupposes pulling them out of the immensely manifold connections they are caught up in.

Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951 (1993)

An entire mythology is stored within our language.

Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951 (1993)

To convince someone of the truth, it is not enough to state it, but rather one must find the path from error to truth.

Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951 (1993)

The problems are dissolved in the actual sense of the word — like a lump of sugar in water.

Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951 (1993)

The ceremonial (hot or cold) as opposed to the haphazard (lukewarm) characterizes piety.

Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951 (1993)

The aim of philosophy is to erect a wall at the point where language stops anyway.

Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951 (1993)

I must plunge into the water of doubt again and again.

Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951 (1993)

Philosophy unravels the knots in our thinking; hence its results must be simple, but its activity is as complicated as the knots that it unravels.

Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951 (1993)

We must plow through the whole of language.

Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951 (1993)

Philosophical problems can be compared to locks on safes, which can be opened by dialing a certain word or number, so that no force can open the door until just this word has been hit upon, and once it is hit upon any child can open it.

Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951 (1993)

Philosophieren ist: falsche Argumente zurückweisen.

Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951 (1993)

Philosophers are often like little children, who first scribble random lines on a piece of paper with their pencils, and now ask an adult "What is that?"

Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951 (1993)

A religious symbol does not rest on any opinion. And error belongs only with opinion. One would like to say: This is what took place here; laugh, if you can.

Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951 (1993)

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)

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)

When I am furious about something, I sometimes beat the ground or a tree with my walking stick. But I certainly do not believe that the ground is to blame or that my beating can help anything... And all rites are of this kind.

Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951 (1993)

Attribution

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