“Wittgenstein believed that, with The Tractatus, he’d cleared up all the outstanding problems in philosophy, so he turned away and did other things.“ [Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]
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“One can mistrust one’s own senses, but not one’s own belief. If there were a verb meaning ‘to believe falsely’, it wouldn’t have any significant first person present indicative.”
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“One’s thinking goes on in a seclusion in comparison with which any physical seclusion is an exhibition to public view.”
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“A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.”
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“Describe the aroma of coffee. Why can’t it be done? Do we lack the words? And for what are words lacking? (William James: ‘Our vocabulary is inadequate.’ Then why don’t we introduce a new one? What would have to be the case for us to be able to?)”
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“One often makes a remark and only later sees how true it is.”
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“The philosopher strives to find the liberating word that finally permits us to grasp what up to now has intangibly weighed down upon our consciousness.”
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“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.”
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“Philosophy unravels the knots in our thinking, hence its results must be simple, but its activity is as complicated as the knots it unravels.”
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“Humor isn’t a mood but a way of looking at the world. So if it’s correct to say that humor was stamped out in Nazi Germany, that doesn’t mean that people weren’t in good spirits, or anything of that sort, but something deeper and much more important.”
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“Philosophical problems are dissolved in the actual sense of the word – like a lump of sugar in water.”
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“Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.”
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“A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that’s unlocked and opens inwards, as long as it doesn’t occur to him to pull rather than push.”
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