A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.
The limits of my language means the limits of my world.
I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
Hell isn't other people. Hell is yourself.
The real question of life after death isn't whether or not it exists, but even if it does what problem this really solves.
I am my world.
Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.
If people never did silly things nothing intelligent would ever get done.
Only describe, don't explain.
If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.
Don't for heaven's sake, be afraid of talking nonsense! But you must pay attention to your nonsense.
A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards; as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push.
Not how the world is, but that it is, is the mystery.
The problems are solved, not by giving new information, but by arranging what we have known since long.
Never stay up on the barren heights of cleverness, but come down into the green valleys of silliness.
How small a thought it takes to fill a life.
Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.
We are asleep. Our Life is a dream. But we wake up sometimes, just enough to know that we are dreaming.
I act with complete certainty. But this certainty is my own.
We feel that even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all.
To imagine a language is to imagine a form of life.
What can be shown, cannot be said.
The world of the happy is quite different from that of the unhappy.
What is troubling us is the tendency to believe that the mind is like a little man within.
At the core of all well-founded belief lies belief that is unfounded.
Ethics and aesthetics are one.
When we can't think for ourselves, we can always quote
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.
An honest religious thinker is like a tightrope walker. He almost looks as though he were walking on nothing but air. His support is the slenderest imaginable. And yet it really is possible to walk on it.
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?
If in life we are surrounded by death, then in the health of our intellect we are surrounded by madness.
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Don't think, but look! (PI 66)
Language disguises thought.
If there were a verb meaning "to believe falsely," it would not have any significant first person, present indicative.
Sometimes, in doing philosophy, one just wants to utter an inarticulate sound.
Logic takes care of itself; all we have to do is to look and see how it does it.
The mystical is not how the world is, but that it is.
When you are philosophizing you have to descend into primeval chaos and feel at home there.
One often makes a remark and only later sees how true it is.
The eternal life is given to those who live in the present.
If you tried to doubt everything you would not get as far as doubting anything. The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen.
A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably.
You can't think decently if you're not willing to hurt yourself
I give no sources, because it is indifferent to me whether what I have thought has already been thought before me by another.
This sort of thing has got to be stopped. Bad philosophers are like slum landlords. It's my job to put them out of business.
I sit astride life like a bad rider on a horse. I only owe it to the horse's good nature that I am not thrown off at this very moment.
The philosopher is not a citizen of any community of ideas, that is what makes him a philosopher.
Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly. Everything that can be said can be said clearly.
The face is the soul of the body.
Knowledge is in the end based on acknowledgement.
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.
This is how philosophers should salute each other: ‘Take your time.
Our greatest stupidities may be very wise.
Tell them I've had a wonderful life.
Suppose someone were to say: 'Imagine this butterfly exactly as it is, but ugly instead of beautiful'?!
Language is a part of our organism and no less complicated than it.
The world is everything that is the case.
It's impossible for me to say one word about all that music has meant to me in my life. How, then, can I hope to be understood?
A tautology's truth is certain, a proposition's possible, a contradiction's impossible.
Belief in the causal nexus is superstition.
I think I summed up my attitude to philosophy when I said: philosophy ought really to be written only as a poetic composition.
It is not humanly possible to gather immediately from it what the logic of language is. Language disguises thought.
I am not interested in constructing a building, so much as in having a perspicuous view of the foundations of possible buildings.
The human body is the best picture of the human soul.
Our life is endless in the way that our visual field is without limit.
In philosophy it is always good to put a question instead of an answer to a question. For an answer to the philosophical question may easily be unfair; disposing of it by means of another question is not.
Just improve yourself; that is the only thing you can do to better the world.
Where two principles really do meet which cannot be reconciled with one another, then each man declares the other a fool and a heretic
Music conveys to us itself!
We are struggling with language. We are engaged in a struggle with language.
Always come down from the barren heights of cleverness into the green valleys of folly.
Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination.
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.
Nothing is more important for teaching us to understand the concepts we have than to construct fictitious ones.
Most of the propositions and questions to be found in philosophical works are not false but nonsensical.
It's not how the world is, but that it is, that is cause for astonishment.
So in the end, when one is doing philosophy, one gets to the point where one would like just to emit an inarticulate sound.
Christianity is not a doctrine, not, I mean, a theory about what has happened & will happen to the human soul, but a description of something that actually takes place in human life.
People nowadays think that scientists exist to instruct them, poets, musicians, etc. to give them pleasure. The idea that these have something to teach them - that does not occur to them.
Concerning that which cannot be talked about, we should not say anything.
What stands fast does so, not because it is intrinsically obvious or convincing; it is rather held fast by what lies around it.
There can never be surprises in logic.
If a lion could speak, we could not understand him.
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.
There are no subjects in the world. A subject is a limitation of the world.
The primary question about life after death is not whether it is a fact, but even if it is, what problems that really solves.
I should not like my writing to spare other people the trouble of thinking. But, if possible, to stimulate someone to thoughts of his own.
 is the background against which whatever I could express has its meaning. )
Perhaps what is inexpressible (what I find mysterious and am not able to express) is the background against which whatever I could express has its meaning.
You must always be puzzled by mental illness. The thing I would dread most, if I became mentally ill, would be your adopting a common sense attitude; that you could take it for granted that I was deluded
The aspect of things that are most important to us are hidden because of their familiarity and simplicity.
In art it is hard to say anything as good as saying nothing.
It is so characteristic, that just when the mechanics of reproduction are so vastly improved, there are fewer and fewer people who know how music should be played.
Roughly speaking: objects are colourless
Language is a labyrinth of paths. You approach from one side and know your way about; you approach the same place from another side and no longer know your way about.
If, for example, you were to think more deeply about death, then it would be truly strange if, in doing so, you did not encounter new images, new linguistic fields.
Philosophy, as we use the word, is a fight against the fascination which forms of expression exert upon us.
Resting on your laurels is as dangerous as resting when you are walking in the snow. You doze off and die in your sleep.
