*
“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 use in the first-person present tense.”
***
“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.”
***
“One often makes a remark and only later sees how true it is.”
***
“Philosophy unravels the knots in our thinking, so its results must be simple, but it’s an activity as complicated as the knots it unravels.”
***
Often, philosophical questions or confusions slowly just disappear as you gain a deeper understanding of the topic. “They’re dissolved in the actual sense of the word ― like a lump of sugar in water.”
***
“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.”
*
*
*
*
“The aim of this book is to draw a limit or boundary to thought ― or rather, not to thought, but to the expression of thought; for in order to be able to draw a boundary to thought, both sides of the boundary would have to be thinkable ― we’d have to be able to think what cannot be thought. It’ll therefore only be in language that the boundary can be drawn, and what lies on the other side of the boundary will simply be nonsense.”
***
“My work consists of two parts: the one which is here, and everything which I have not written. And it’s this second part that’s the important one.”
***
Just as a mathematician might discuss the infinite set containing all equations in arithmetic that could possibly be meaningfully expressed (including both true and false ones), Wittgenstein is discussing the infinite set containing all statements in language that could possibly be meaningfully expressed (including both true and false ones).
***
“We can’t say what an ‘unlogical’ world would look like. It’s as impossible to represent in language anything that ‘contradicts logic’ as it is in geometry to give the coordinates of a figure that contradicts the laws of space, or to give the coordinates of a point that doesn’t exist.” For instance, something like A.≡.¬A doesn’t contradict logic; it’s just false.
***
“Philosophy isn’t one of the natural sciences ― it’s on a different level. The word ‘philosophy’ must mean something which stands above or below, but not beside the natural sciences.”
***
“All statements outside of logic, mathematics, and natural science are ultimately meaningless, including those in this book. You must, so to speak, throw away the ladder, after you’ve climbed up.”
***
“There are indeed things that cannot be put into words ― not even in theory. You’re bound to encounter them. They are what is mystical.”
***
“What we cannot speak about, we must pass over in silence.”
*
*
*
philosophicaltreasures.com 