Wittgenstein, Richard

"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent—but not because one cannot think it."

"I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves."

"What is your aim in philosophy? To show the fly the way out of the bottle."

"The task of philosophy is to work on oneself. On one's own interpretation. On one's way of seeing things."

"A man can be very intelligent and yet be neurotic and confused."

"All I know is what I have words for."

"Think of the tools in a toolbox: there is a hammer, pliers, a saw, a screwdriver, a ruler, a glue-pot, nails and screws. The function of words is as diverse as the functions of these objects."

"Confusions make philosophy. We might say, confusions are the darkness out of which all philosophy must come."

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

"Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself."

"If people never did silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done."

"We feel that even when all possible scientific questions have been answered, the problems of life remain completely untouched."

"The agreement of mankind is the deciding factor."

"One cannot be angrily certain one would not drink the coffee cup."

"What does it matter what you think? The important thing is what you do."

"Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death."

"My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as senseless."

"The true end of philosophy is to teach us how to live well."

"There is no such thing as the problem of life. There is the problem of my life. Life is not a question that demands an answer."

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but it is the beholder's responsibility to see it."

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

"Sense data are the last things to which we should have recourse in order to explain the world."

"The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that very existence of the world is a form of resistance."

"To understand a language means to be master of a technique."

"The picture is still held captive; we must release it by finding the right description of it."

"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.'"

"One cannot think crooked."

"When we look at things, we see the things, not how they are."

"The more narrowly we examine the actual language, the sharper becomes the conflict between it and our requirement."

"Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly. Everything that can be said can be said clearly."