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.

I am showing my pupils details of an immense landscape which they cannot possibly know their way around.

If a false thought is so much as expressed boldly and clearly, a great deal has already been gained.

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.

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

One of the most difficult of the philosopher's tasks is to find out where the shoe pinches.

Language is a part of our organism and no less complicated than it.

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

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. ——

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

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.

Logic takes care of itself; all we have to do is to look and see how it does it.

One often makes a remark and only later sees how true it is.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

The thought is the significant proposition. (4)

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)

The logical picture of the facts is the thought. (3)

What is the case, the fact, is the existence of atomic facts. (2)

The world is the totality of facts, not things. (1.1)

The world is all that is the case. (1)

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.

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.

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.

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.

It is true: Man is the microcosm: I am my world.

What cannot be imagined cannot even be talked about.

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

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

"I never believed in God before." - that I understand. But not: "I never really believed in Him before."

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).

I am showing my pupils details of an immense landscape which they cannot possibly know their way around.

You could attach prices to ideas. Some cost a lot some little. ... And how do you pay for ideas? I believe: with courage.

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

One might say: art shows us the miracles of nature. It is based on the concept of the miracles of nature.

Religion is, as it were, the calm bottom of the sea at its deepest point, which remains calm however high the waves on the surface may be.

Wisdom is passionless. But faith by contrast is what Kierkegaard calls a passion.

I believe that one of the things Christianity says is that sound doctrines are all useless. That you have to change your life. (Or the direction of your life.)

If life becomes hard to bear we think of a change in our circumstances. But the most important and effective change, a change in our own attitude, hardly even occurs to us, and the resolution to take such a step is very difficult for us.

You could attach prices to thoughts. Some cost a lot, some a little. And how does one pay for thoughts? The answer, I think, is: with courage.

"Fare well!" "A whole world of pain is contained in these words." How can it be contained in them? - It is bound up in them. The words are like an acorn from which an oak tree can grow.

The less somebody knows and understands himself the less great he is, however great may be his talent. For this reason our scientists are not great.

A hero looks death in the face, real death, not just the image of death. Behaving honourably in a crisis doesn't mean being able to act the part of a hero well, as in the theatre, it means being able to look death itself in the eye. For an actor may play lots of different roles, but at the end of it all he himself, the human being, is the one who has to die.

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

The purely corporeal can be uncanny. Compare the way angels and devils are portrayed. So-called "miracles" must be connected with this. A miracle must be, as it were, a sacred gesture.

If life becomes hard to bear we think of improvements. But the most important and effective improvement, in our own attitude, hardly occurs to us, and we can decide on this only with the utmost difficulty.