Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein Quotes

Philosophy is that activity by which the meaning of propositions is established or discovered; it is a question of what the propositions actually mean. The content, soul, and spirit of science naturally consist in what is ultimately meant by its sentences; the philosophical activity of rendering significant is thus the alpha and omega of all scientific knowledge.
[Moritz Schlick interpreting Ludwig Wittgenstein's position] ~ Moritz Schlick

In life, particularly in public life, psychology is more powerful than logic. ~ Ludwig Quidde

The dear good people don't know how long it takes to learn to read. I've been at it eighty years, and can't say yet that I've reached the goal. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

One never goes so far as when one doesn't know where one is going. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

I respect the man who knows distinctly what he wants. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

It was my wish that our sons should cultivate a habit of bold independence, for I well knew that it might easily be the will of God to deprive them of their parents; when, without an enterprising spirit of self reliance, their position would be truly miserable. ~ Johann David Wyss

Keynes did not teach us how to perform the miracle of turning a stone into bread, but the not at all miraculous procedure of eating the seed corn. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

Mozart is a human incarnation of the divine force of creation. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

If God had looked into our minds he would not have been able to see there whom we were speaking of. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

It is impossible to grasp the meaning of the idea of sound money if one does not realize that it was devised as an instrument for the protection of civil liberties against despotic inroads on the part of governments. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

What one believes does not, therefore, have to be proved, and a proposition can be ever so incontrovertibly proven without on that account being believed. ~ Johann Georg Hamann

To have more, you must first be more. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Oh you men who think or say that I am malevolent, stubborn, or misanthropic, how greatly do you wrong me. You do not know the secret cause which makes me seem that way to you. Oh how harshly was I flung back by the doubly sad experience of my bad hearing. ~ Ludwig Van Beethoven

Don't ask what it means, but rather how it is used. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

He who has a task to perform must know how to take sides, or he is quite unworthy of it. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

If we put ourselves in the place of other people, the jealousy and hatred we so often feel about them would disappear, and if we put others in our place, pride and conceit would greatly diminish. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Colors are light's suffering and joy ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

The aspect of things that are most important to us are hidden because of their familiarity and simplicity. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

He who lives in the present lives in eternity. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

The smiles that encourage severity of judgment hide malice and insincerity. ~ Johann Kaspar Lavater

He who only wishes and hopes does not interfere actively with the course of events and with the shaping of his own destiny. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

All force strives forward to work far and wide
To live and grow and ever to expand;
Yet we are checked and thwarted on each side
By the world's flux and swept along like sand:
In this internal storm and outward tide
We hear a promise, hard to understand:
From the compulsion that all creatures binds,
Who overcomes himself, his freedom finds. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

A man's foibles are what makes him lovable. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

One must submit, like a traveller who has to ascend a mountain: if the mountain was not there, the road would be both shorter and pleasanter; but there it is, and he must get over it. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

You get tragedy where the tree, instead of bending, breaks. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

My worthy friend, gray are all theories
And green alone Life's golden tree. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Woman is superlative; the best leader in life, the best guide in happy days, the best consoler in sorrow. ~ Johann Gottfried Seume

Prior to Flew, major apologies for atheism were those of Enlightenment thinkers (David Hume, Arthur Schopenhauer, Ludwig Feuerbach, and Friedrich Nietzsche).

Major philosophers of Flew's generation who were atheists: W. V. O. Quine and Gilbert Ryle. But none took the step of developing book-length arguments to support their personal beliefs.

In later years, atheist philosophers who critically examined and rejected the traditional arguments for God's existence: Paul Edwards, Wallace Matson, Kai Nielsen, Paul Kurtz, J. L. Mackie, Richard Gale, Michael Martin. But their works did not change the agenda and framework of discussion the way Flew's innovative publications did. ~ Antony Flew

Certain flaws are necessary for the whole. It would seem strange if old friends lacked certain quirks. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Human beings have a physical need to tell themselves when at work: "Let's have done with it now," and it's having constantly to go on thinking in the face of this need when philosophizing that makes this work so strenuous. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

Up to now in the West none of the apostles of stabilization and petrification has succeeded in wiping out the individuais innate disposition to think and to apply to ali problems the yardstick of reason. This alone, and no more, history and philosophy can assert in dealing with doctrines that claim to know exactly what the future has in store for mankind. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

If teaching has any purpose, it is to implant true insight and responsibility. Education must lead us from irresponsible opinion to true responsible judgement. It must lead us from chance and arbitrariness to rational clarity and intellectual order. ~ Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe

No very deep knowledge of economics is usually needed for grasping the immediate effects of a measure; but the task of economics is to foretell the remoter effects, and so to allow us to avoid such acts as attempt to remedy a present ill by sowing the seeds of a much greater ill for the future. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

Poetry is the universal possession of mankind, revealing itself everywhere, and at all times, in hundreds and hundreds of men. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

The eye of perfected friendship with God is aware of deeper dimensions of reality, to which the eyes of the average man and the average Christian are not yet opened. ~ Josef Pieper

I have not often seen more natural acting than that of these masks. It is such acting as can only be sustained by a remarkably happy talent and long practice. While I am writing this, they are making a tremendous noise on the canal under my window, though it is past midnight. Whether for good or for evil, they are always doing something. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Nothing is more damaging to a new truth than an old error. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

True genius repeats itself forever, and never repeats itself
one ever varied sense beams novelty and unity on all. ~ Johann Kaspar Lavater

Good morning on the 7th of July.
while still in bed my thoughts turn towards you my Immortal Beloved, now and then happy, then sad again, waiting whether Fate might answer us. – I can only live either wholly with you or not at all, yes, I have resolved to stray about far away until I can fly into your arms, and feel at home with you, and send my soul embraced by you into the realm of the Spirits. – Yes, unfortunately it must be. – You will compose yourself, all the more since you know my faithfulness to you, never can another own my heart, never – never. – Oh God why do I have to separate from someone whom I love so much, and yet my life in V[ienna] as it is now is a miserable life. – Your love makes me at once most happy and most unhappy. – At my age, I would now need some conformity regularity in my life – can this exist in our relationship? – Angel, I just learned that the post goes every day – and I must therefore conclude so that you get the l[etter] straightway – be patient, only through quiet contemplation of our existence can we achieve our purpose to live together – be calm – love me – today – yesterday. – What yearning with tears for you – you – you – my life – my everything – farewell – oh continue to love me – never misjudge the most faithful heart of your Beloved
L.
Forever thine
forever mine
forever us. ~ Ludwig Van Beethoven

My day passes between logic, whistling, going for walks, and being depressed. I wish to God that I were more intelligent and everything would finally become clear to me - or else that I needn't live much longer. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

What undermines my heart is the devouring force which lies hidden in the universe of nature and which creates nothing that does not destroy its neighbour and itself. And so I reel in fear, the energies of heaven and earth weaving around me. And all I see is an eternally devouring, eternally regurgitating monster. 21 ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Too many parents make life hard for their children by trying, too zealously, to make it easy for them. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

To theology, ... only what it holds sacred is true, whereas to philosophy, only what holds true is sacred. ~ Ludwig Feuerbach

When you take a man as he is, you make him worse. When you take a man as he can be, you make him better. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

My father's parents were carpenters. They were also builders partly. They were painters. And several of them were very, active in the theatre and all such nonsense, you know. ~ Josef Albers

Stood I, O Nature! man alone in thee, Then were it worth one's while a man to be. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe