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4 months 5 days ago
A tautology's truth is certain, a proposition's possible, a contradiction's impossible. (Certain, possible, impossible: here we have the first indication of the scale that we need in the theory of probability.) (4.464)
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Original German: Die Wahrheit der Tautologie ist gewiss, des Satzes möglich, der Kontradiktion unmöglich
4 months 5 days ago
Propositions are truth-functions of elementary propositions. (An elementary proposition is a truth-function of itself.) (5)
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Original German: Der Satz ist eine Wahrheitsfunktion der Elementarsätze
4 months 5 days ago
If I cannot say a priori what elementary propositions there are, then the attempt to do so must lead to obvious nonsense. (5.5571)
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Original German: Wenn ich die Elementarsätze nicht a priori angeben kann, dann muss es zu offenbarem Unsinn führen, sie angeben zu wollen.
4 months 5 days ago
The limits of my language mean the limits of my world. (5.6)
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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. | Original German: Die Grenzen meiner Sprache bedeuten die Grenzen meiner Welt.
4 months 5 days ago
Logic pervades the world: the limits of the world are also its limits. So we cannot say in logic, "The world has this in it, and this, but not that." For that would appear to presuppose that we were excluding certain possibilities, and this cannot be the case, since it would require that logic should go beyond the limits of the world; for only in that way could it view those limits from the other side as well. We cannot think what we cannot think; so what we cannot think we cannot say either. (5.61)
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Original German:Die Logik erfüllt die Welt; die Grenzen der Welt sind auch ihre Grenzen. Wir können also in der Logik nicht sagen: Das und das gibt es in der Welt, jenes nicht.Das würde nämlich scheinbar voraussetzen, dass wir gewisse Möglichkeiten aussch
4 months 5 days 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. (5.62)
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4 months 5 days ago
The world and life are one. (5.621)
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Original German: Die Welt und das Leben sind Eins.
4 months 5 days ago
The thought is the significant proposition. (4)
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Original German: Der Gedanke ist der sinnvolle Satz.
4 months 5 days ago
Though a state of affairs that would contravene the laws of physics can be represented by us spatially, one that would contravene the laws of geometry cannot. (3.0321)
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Original German: Wohl können wir einen Sachverhalt räumlich darstellen, welcher den Gesetzen der Physik, aber keinen, der den Gesetzen der Geometrie zuwiderliefe.
4 months 5 days ago
The logical picture of the facts is the thought. (3)
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Original German: Das logische Bild der Tatsachen ist der Gedanke.
4 months 5 days ago
It is true: Man is the microcosm: I am my world.
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Journal entry (12 October 1916), p. 84e
4 months 5 days ago
What cannot be imagined cannot even be talked about.
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Journal entry (12 October 1916), p. 84e
4 months 5 days 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
4 months 5 days 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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4 months 5 days 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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Preface
4 months 5 days ago
The whole sense of the book might be summed up the following words: what can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence.
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Original German: Man könnte den ganzen Sinn des Buches etwa in die Worte fassen: Was sich überhaupt sagen lässt, lässt sich klar sagen; und wovon man nicht reden kann, darüber muss man schweigen. | Introduction
4 months 5 days ago
The world is all that is the case. (1)
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Original German: Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist.
4 months 5 days ago
The world is the totality of facts, not things. (1.1)
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Original German: Die Welt ist die Gesamtheit der Tatsachen, nicht der Dinge
4 months 5 days ago
What is the case, the fact, is the existence of atomic facts. (2)
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Original German: Was der Fall ist, die Tatsache, ist das Bestehen von Sachverhalten.
4 months 5 days ago
I am my world. (The microcosm.) (5.63)
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Original German: Ich bin meine welt (Der Mikrokosmos.)
4 months 5 days ago
The subject does not belong to the world, but it is a limit of the world. (5.632)
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Original German: Das Subjekt gehört nicht zur Welt, sondern es ist eine Grenze der Welt.
4 months 5 days ago
The world of the happy is quite different from the world of the unhappy. (6.43)
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Die Welt des Glücklichen ist eine andere als die des Unglücklichen
4 months 5 days ago
But ordinary language is all right.
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p. 28
4 months 5 days ago
The difficulty in philosophy is to say no more than we know.
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p. 45
4 months 5 days ago
To convince someone of the truth, it is not enough to state it, but rather one must find the path from error to truth.
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Ch. 7 : Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough, p. 119
4 months 5 days 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
4 months 5 days 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
4 months 5 days ago
Every explanation is after all an hypothesis.
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Ch. 7 : Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough, p. 123
4 months 5 days 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
4 months 5 days 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
4 months 5 days ago
The ceremonial (hot or cold) as opposed to the haphazard (lukewarm) characterizes piety.
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Ch. 7 : Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough, p. 127
4 months 5 days ago
What should we gain by a definition, as it can only lead us to other undefined terms?
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p. 26
4 months 5 days 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
4 months 5 days 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
4 months 5 days 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. (6.4311)
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Der Tod ist kein Ereignis des Lebens. Den Tod erlebt man nicht. Wenn man unter Ewigkeit nicht unendliche Zeitdauer, sondern Unzeitlichkeit versteht, dann lebt der ewig, der in der Gegenwart lebt. Unser Leben ist ebenso endlos, wie unser Gesichtsfeld grenz
4 months 5 days ago
It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists. (6.44)
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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.
4 months 5 days 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. (6.51)
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4 months 5 days ago
There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical. (6.522)
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Original German: Es gibt allerdings Unaussprechliches. Dies zeigt sich, es ist das Mystische.
4 months 5 days ago
My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.) (6.54)
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Original German: Meine Sätze erläutern dadurch, dass sie der, welcher mich versteht, am Ende als unsinnig erkennt, wenn er durch sie—auf ihnen—über sie hinausgestiegen ist. (Er muss sozusagen die Leiter wegwerfen, nachdem er auf ihr hinaufgestiegen ist.)
4 months 5 days 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)
4 months 5 days ago
What I give is the morphology of the use of an expression. I show that it has kinds of uses of which you had not dreamed. In philosophy one feels forced to look at a concept in a certain way. What I do is suggest, or even invent, other ways of looking at it. I suggest possibilities of which you had not previously thought. You thought that there was one possibility, or only two at most. But I made you think of others. Furthermore, I made you see that it was absurd to expect the concept to conform to those narrow possibilities. Thus your mental cramp is relieved, and you are free to look around the field of use of the expression and to describe the different kinds of uses of it.
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Lectures of 1946 - 1947, as quoted in Ludwig Wittgenstein : A Memoir (1966) by Norman Malcolm, p. 43
4 months 5 days ago
Tell them I've had a wonderful life.
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Last words, to his doctor's wife (28 April 1951)–as quoted in Ludwig Wittgenstein : A Memoir (1966) by Norman Malcolm, p. 100
4 months 5 days ago
(About Jesus) If He did not rise again, then He rotted in the grave like any other human being. He died and his body rotted.
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4 months 5 days ago
We must plow through the whole of language.
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Ch. 7 : Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough, p. 131
4 months 5 days ago
115. If you tried to doubt everything you would not get as far as doubting anything. The game of doubting itself presupposes .
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4 months 5 days ago
Freud's fanciful pseudo-explanations (precisely because they are brilliant) perform a disservice. (Now any ass has these pictures available to use in "explaining" symptoms of an illness.
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p. 55e
4 months 5 days ago
I would really like to slow down the speed of reading with continual punctuation marks. For I would like to be read slowly. (As I myself read.)
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p. 77e
4 months 5 days ago
Nothing is more important than the formation of fictional concepts, which teach us at last to understand our own.
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p. 85e
4 months 5 days ago
If a false thought is so much as expressed boldly and clearly, a great deal has already been gained.
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p. 86e
4 months 5 days ago
Human beings have a physical need to tell themselves when at work: “Let’s have done with it now,” and it's having constantly to go on thinking in the face of this need when philosophizing that makes this work so strenuous.
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p. 86e

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