Wittgenstein, Richard

"My work has repeatedly led me to ask questions in the form: 'Is it right to say...?'"

"When you get into a philosophical muddle, look to the use of words. How do you actually use this word?"

"The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity."

"A man will be imprisoned in a room with an open door that he does not think to try."

"If I have exhausted the justifications I have reached bedrock, and my spade is turned."

"Our civilization is characterized by the word 'progress.' Progress is its form, not one of its features."

"The world of the happy man is a different one from that of the unhappy man."

"Think of the tools in a toolbox: there is a hammer, pliers, a saw, a screwdriver, a ruler, a glue-pot, glue, nails and screws."

"The work of the philosopher consists in assembling reminders for a particular purpose."

"Language-games are the forms of language that we acquire in childhood."

"Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics; I can assure you that mine are still greater."

"A philosophical problem has the form: I don't know my way about."

"The subject does not belong to the world; rather, the subject is a limit of the world."

"If I imagine someone and I believe he is in the room, but he is not in the room, then I am mistaken."

"Music doesn't seem to be a matter of intricate relationships, as the theory suggests. A single note is not less beautiful than a whole chord."

"The picture theory of meaning says that a proposition is true when it corresponds to a fact."

"A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new."

"To say that a picture is ugly is not to say that it fails to depict its subject clearly and distinctly."

"The right way of doing philosophy would really be the following: to say nothing except what can be said."

"What is it to follow a rule? Here is a fundamental question in the philosophy of language."

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

"Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus was my attempt to draw a final boundary line to the only thing that matters: what lies on either side of it."

"Only describe, don't explain. Only look, don't think."

"The facts all contribute to only one end; and to the end they all pull the same way."

"Most of the propositions and questions of philosophers arise from our failure to understand the logic of our language."

"It is only in the old texts, with their polish and their authority, that the rules of language are given."

"To understand a word, understand its use."

"The riddle does not exist. If a question can be put at all, then it can also be answered."

"I sit in a garden and note that it is beautiful. But if I try to explain what beauty is, I find myself at a loss."

"One must still have chaos within oneself to give birth to a dancing star."