Verified Quotes
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Ludwig Wittgenstein, Austrian philosopher who showed that our deepest problems are often knots in language rather than facts, gets quoted everywhere and sourced almost nowhere. The 8 quotes below are different: each one is checked word for word against the cited work, starting with Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, not copied from aggregator sites that pass misattributions along. The source is named under every line, so you can trace each quote back to the page it came from.
Read Ludwig Wittgenstein's full profile and how they reason →5 verified quotes
On the limits of explaining yourself:
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
On how the words you use shape the life you can imagine:
The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
On how your outlook reshapes the life you're grieving into:
The world of the happy man is different from that of the unhappy man.Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
On judging a choice by how well it's made, not just its outcome:
Ethics and aesthetics are one.Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
On starting from what's actually true rather than what you wish were true:
The world is everything that is the case.Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
2 verified quotes
On the story about yourself you can't seem to escape:
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.Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations
On untangling a decision clouded by other people's language:
Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations
1 verified quote
On being honest with yourself before you decide:
Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value