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Roughly speaking: to say of two things that they are identical is nonsense, and to say of one thing that it is identical with itself is to say nothing.

— Ludwig Wittgenstein Bertrand Russell, C. K. Ogden (2010)

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Mind

More quotes by Ludwig Wittgenstein

Don't for heaven's sake, be afraid of talking nonsense! But you must pay attention to your nonsense.

Culture and Value (1980)

Never stay up on the barren heights of cleverness, but come down into the green valleys of silliness.

Culture and Value (1980)

Man has to awaken to wonder — and so perhaps do peoples. Science is a way of sending him to sleep again.

Culture and Value (1980)

It is one of the chief skills of the philosopher not to occupy himself with questions which do not concern him.

The way you use the word "God" does not show whom you mean — but, rather, what you mean.

Culture and Value (1980)

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The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

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Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.

Kenneth Boulding to Kenneth Boulding in: United States. Congress. House (1973)

The greater part of humanity is too much harassed and fatigued by the struggle with want, to rally itself for a new and sterner struggle with error.

Friedrich Schiller On the Aesthetic Education of Man (1794)

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

George Bernard Shaw Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Ludwig Wittgenstein (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.