Quotes from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, quote from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“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 the way in which our visual field has no limits.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, quote from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“We feel that even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, quote from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“For an answer which cannot be expressed the question too cannot be expressed.

The riddle does not exist.

If a question can be put at all, then it can also be answered.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, quote from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“Language disguises the thought; so that from the external form of the clothes one cannot infer the form of the thought they clothe, because the external form of the clothes is constructed with quite another object than to let the form of the body be recognized.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, quote from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, quote from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“I give no sources, because it is indifferent to me
whether what I have thought has already been
thought before me by another.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, quote from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly. Everything that can be said can be said clearly.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, quote from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“The temporal immortality of the soul of man, that is to say, its eternal survival also after death, is not only in no way guaranteed, but this assumption in the first place will not do for us what we always tried to make it do. Is a riddle solved by the fact that I survive forever? Is this eternal life not as enigmatic as our present one? The solution of the riddle of life in space and time lies outside space and time.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, quote from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“Belief in the causal nexus is superstition.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, quote from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“A tautology's truth is certain, a proposition's possible, a contradiction's impossible.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, quote from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“6.4311
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 grenzenlos ist.


6.4311
Death is not an event of life. Death is not lived through.
If by eternity is understood not endless temporal duration but timelessness, then he lives eternally who lives in the present.
Our life is endless in the way that our visual field is without limit.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, quote from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“Der Zweck der Philosophie ist die logische Klärung der Gedanken.
Die Philosophie ist keine Lehre, sondern eine Tätigkeit.
Ein philosophisches Werk besteht wesentlich aus Erläuterungen.
Das Resultat der Philosophie sind nicht »philosophische Sätze«, sondern das Klarwerden von Sätzen.
Die Philosophie soll die Gedanken, die sonst, gleichsam, trübe und verschwommen sind, klar machen und scharf abgrenzen.

4.112
The object of philosophy is the logical clarification of thoughts.
Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.
A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations.
The result of philosophy is not a number of "philosophical propositions", but to make propositions clear.
Philosophy should make clear and delimit sharply the thoughts which otherwise are, as it were, opaque and blurred.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, quote from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“In the world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it, there is no value, - and if there were, it would be of no value.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, quote from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“It is not humanly possible to gather immediately from it what the logic of language is. Language disguises thought.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, quote from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, quote from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“Most of the propositions and questions to be found in philosophical works are not false but nonsensical.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, quote from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“Our life is endless in the way that our visual field is without limit.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, quote from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“There can never be surprises in logic.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, quote from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“All numbers in logic must be capable of justification.   Or rather it must become plain that there are no numbers in logic.   There are no pre-eminent numbers.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, quote from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“Roughly speaking: to say of two things that they are identical is nonsense, and to say of one thing that it is identical with itself is to say nothing.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, quote from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“The agreement or disagreement or its sense with reality constitutes its truth or falsity.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, quote from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“A logical picture of facts is a thought.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, quote from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, quote from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“5.6 The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.
5.61 Logic fills the world: the limits of the world are also its limits.
We cannot therefore say in logic: This and this there is in the world, that there is not.
For that would apparently presuppose that we exclude certain possibilities, and this cannot be the case since otherwise logic must get outside the limits of the world : that is, if it could consider these limits from the other side also.
What we cannot think, that we cannot think: we cannot therefore say what we cannot think.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, quote from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“This book will perhaps only be understood by those who have themselves already thought the thoughts which are expressed in it-or similar thoughts. It is therefore not a text-book. Its object would be attained if it afforded pleasure to one who read it with understanding.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, quote from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“Most propositions and questions, that have been written about philosophical matters, are not false, but senseless. ... (They are of the same kind as the question whether the Good is more or less identical than the Beautiful.)”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, quote from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

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Popular quotes

“If you don't know what you want," the doorman said, "you end up with a lot you don't.”
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― Louis Sachar, quote from Holes

“Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends.”
― Alan Moore, quote from Watchmen

“O human race, born to fly upward, wherefore at a little wind dost thou so fall?”
― Dante Alighieri, quote from The Divine Comedy

“I can believe things that are true and things that aren't true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they're true or not.

I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Beatles and Marilyn Monroe and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen - I believe that people are perfectable, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkled lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women.

I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone's ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state.

I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste.

I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold like martians in War of the Worlds.

I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman.

I believe that mankind's destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically impossible for a bumble bee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself.

I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn't even know that I'm alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck.

I believe that anyone who says sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too.

I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system.

I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from American Gods

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