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2 months 3 weeks ago

Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. Our life has no end in just the way in which our visual field has no limits.

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2 months 3 weeks ago

Make sure that your religion is a matter between you and God only.

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Comment to Maurice O'Connor Drury, as quoted in Wittgenstein Reads Freud : The Myth of the Unconscious (1996) by Jacques Bouveresse, as translated by Carol Cosman, p. 14
2 months 3 weeks ago

Certainly it is correct to say: Conscience is the voice of God.

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p. 75
2 months 3 weeks ago

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

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Ch. 7 : Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough, p. 119
2 months 3 weeks ago

The logical picture of the facts is the thought.

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(3) Original German: Das logische Bild der Tatsachen ist der Gedanke.
2 months 3 weeks ago

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.

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Ch. 9 : Philosophy, p. 185
2 months 3 weeks ago

Don't get involved in partial problems, but always take flight to where there is a free view over the whole single great problem, even if this view is still not a clear one.

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Journal entry
2 months 3 weeks ago

The idea that in order to get clear about the meaning of a general term one had to find the common element in all its applications has shackled philosophical investigation; for it has not only led to no result, but also made the philosopher dismiss as irrelevant the concrete cases, which alone could have helped him understand the usage of the general term.

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p. 19
2 months 3 weeks ago

It is clear that the causal nexus is not a nexus at all.

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Journal entry (12 October 1916), p. 84e
2 months 3 weeks ago

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.

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Ch. 7 : Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough, p. 131
2 months 3 weeks ago

It seems to me as good as certain that we cannot get the upper hand against England. The English - the best race in the world - cannot lose! We, however, can lose and shall lose, if not this year then next year. The thought that our race is going to be beaten depresses me terribly, because I am completely German.

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Writing about the eventual outcome of World War I, in which he was a volunteer in the Austro-Hungarian army (25 October 1914), as quoted in The First World War (2004) by Martin Gilbert, p. 104
2 months 3 weeks ago

It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists.

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(6.44) Variant translation: The mystical is not how the world is, but that it is. Original German: Nicht wie die Welt ist, ist das Mystische, sondern dass sie ist.
2 months 3 weeks ago

The meaning of a question is the method of answering it: then what is the meaning of 'Do two men really mean the same by the word "white"?' Tell me how you are searching, and I will tell you what you are searching for.

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Philosophical Remarks (1991), Part III (27), pp.66-67
2 months 3 weeks ago

What do I know about God and the purpose of life? I know that this world exists. That I am placed in it like my eye in its visual field. That something about it is problematic, which we call its meaning. This meaning does not lie in it but outside of it. That life is the world. That my will penetrates the world. That my will is good or evil. Therefore that good and evil are somehow connected with the meaning of the world. The meaning of life, i.e. the meaning of the world, we can call God. And connect with this the comparison of God to a father. To pray is to think about the meaning of life.

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Journal entry (11 June 1916), p. 72e and 73e
2 months 3 weeks ago

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

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Ch. 7 : Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough, p. 119
2 months 3 weeks ago

The thought is the significant proposition.

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(4) Original German: Der Gedanke ist der sinnvolle Satz.
2 months 3 weeks ago

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

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Ch. 9 : Philosophy, p. 187
2 months 3 weeks ago

My difficulty is only an - enormous - difficulty of expression.

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Journal entry (8 March 1915) p. 40
2 months 3 weeks ago

For remember that in general we don't use language according to strict rules - it hasn't been taught us by means of strict rules, either.

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p. 25
2 months 3 weeks ago

Don't get involved in partial problems, but always take flight to where there is a free view over the whole single great problem.

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2 months 3 weeks ago

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.

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Ch. 7 : Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough, p. 131
2 months 3 weeks ago

I work quite diligently and wish that I were better and smarter. And these both are one and the same.

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In a letter to Paul Engelmann (1917) as quoted in The Idea of Justice (2010) by Amartya Sen, p. 31
2 months 3 weeks ago

Scepticism is not irrefutable, but obviously nonsensical, when it tries to raise doubts where no questions can be asked. For doubt can exist only where a question exists, a question only where an answer exists, and an answer only where something can be said.

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2 months 3 weeks ago

Why in the world shouldn't they have regarded with awe and reverence that act by which the human race is perpetuated. Not every religion has to have St. Augustine's attitude to sex. Why even in our culture marriages are celebrated in a church, everyone present knows what is going to happen that night, but that doesn't prevent it being a religious ceremony.

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Intentionality, and Romanticism (1997) by Richard Thomas Eldridge, p. 130
2 months 3 weeks ago

To believe in a God means to understand the question about the meaning of life. To believe in a God means to see that the facts of the world are not the end of the matter. To believe in God means to see that life has a meaning.

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Journal entry (8 July 1916), p. 74e
2 months 3 weeks ago

Every explanation is after all an hypothesis.

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Ch. 7 : Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough, p. 123
2 months 3 weeks ago

The limits of my language mean the limits of my world. (5.6) Variant translations: The limits of my language stand for the limits of my world. The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. All I know is what I have words for.

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Original German: Die Grenzen meiner Sprache bedeuten die Grenzen meiner Welt.
2 months 3 weeks ago

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?"

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Ch. 9 : Philosophy, p. 193
2 months 3 weeks ago

I cannot get from the nature of the proposition to the individual logical operations!!! That is, I cannot bring out how far the proposition is the picture of the situation. I am almost inclined to give up all my efforts.

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Journal entries (12 March 1915 and 15 March 1915) p. 41
2 months 3 weeks ago

What should we gain by a definition, as it can only lead us to other undefined terms?

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p. 26
2 months 3 weeks ago

The aim of the book is to set a limit to thought, or rather - not to thought, but to the expression of thoughts: for in order to be able to set a limit to thought, we should have to find both sides of the limit thinkable (i.e. we should have to be able to think what cannot be thought). It will therefore only be in language that the limit can be set, and what lies on the other side of the limit will simply be nonsense.

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2 months 3 weeks ago

An entire mythology is stored within our language.

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Ch. 7 : Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough, p. 133
2 months 3 weeks ago

You won't - I really believe - get too much out of reading it. Because you won't understand it; the content will seem strange to you. In reality, it isn't strange to you, for the point is ethical. I once wanted to give a few words in the foreword which now actually are not in it, which, however, I'll write to you now because they might be a key for you: I wanted to write that my work consists of two parts: of the one which is here, and of everything which I have not written. And precisely this second part is the important one.

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On his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, in a letter to Ludwig von Ficker (1919), published in Wittgenstein : Sources and Perspectives (1979) by C. Grant Luckhard
2 months 3 weeks ago

There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.

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(6.522) Original German: Es gibt allerdings Unaussprechliches. Dies zeigt sich, es ist das Mystische.
2 months 3 weeks ago

A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.

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As quoted in "A View from the Asylum" in Philosophical Investigations from the Sanctity of the Press (2004), by Henry Dribble, p. 87
2 months 3 weeks ago

There are two godheads: the world and my independent I. I am either happy or unhappy, that is all. It can be said: good or evil do not exist. A man who is happy must have no fear. Not even in the face of death. Only a man who lives not in time but in the present is happy.

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Journal entry (8 July 1916), p. 74e
2 months 3 weeks ago

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.

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Ch. 7 : Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough, p. 123
2 months 3 weeks ago

This remark provides the key to the problem, how much truth there is in solipsism. For what the solipsist means is quite correct; only it cannot be said, but makes itself manifest. The world is my world: this is manifest in the fact that the limits of language (of that language which alone I understand) mean the limits of my world.

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-5.62
2 months 3 weeks ago

This is not for me, I want an entirely rural spot.

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C 1920, expressing displeasure at a village that had a park with a fountain.
2 months 3 weeks ago

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

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Journal entry
2 months 3 weeks ago

But ordinary language is all right.

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p. 28
2 months 3 weeks ago

The world is all that is the case.

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(1) Original German: Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist.
2 months 3 weeks ago

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

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Ch. 9 : Philosophy, p. 183
2 months 3 weeks ago

"It is necessary to be given the prop that all elementary props are given." This is not necessary because it is even impossible. There is no such prop! That all elementary props are given is SHOWN by there being none having an elementary sense which is not given.

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Notes of 1919, as quoted in Ludwig Wittgenstein : The Duty of Genius (1990) by Ray Monk
2 months 3 weeks ago

A proposition is completely logically analyzed if its grammar is made completely clear: no matter what idiom it may be written or expressed in...

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Philosophical Remarks (1930), Part I (1)
2 months 3 weeks ago

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

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As quoted in The Beginning of the End (2004) by Peter Hershey, p. 109 Also, as quoted in "The Relentless Rise of Science as Fun", by Jeremy Burgess, in New Scientist, Volume 143, Issues 1932-1945, originally published 1994.
2 months 3 weeks ago

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.

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Journal entry (24 July 1916), p. 77e
2 months 3 weeks ago

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.

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Ch. 7 : Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough, p. 123
2 months 3 weeks ago

The world and life are one.

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(5.621) Original German: Die Welt und das Leben sind Eins.
2 months 3 weeks ago

We are asleep. Our Life is a dream. But we wake up sometimes, just enough to know that we are dreaming.

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