Ludwig Wittgenstein Quotes

Words are but symbols for the relations of things to one another and to us; nowhere do they touch upon absolute truth.

"Is," "is," "is" — the idiocy of the word haunts me. If it were abolished, human thought might begin to make sense. I don't know what anything "is"; I only know how it seems to me at this moment.

...In another time, What cannot be seen will define us, and we shall be prompted To say that language is error, and all things are wronged By representation. The self, we shall say, can never be Seen with a disguise, and never be seen without one.

Whatever you say it is, it isn't.

Language is the mother of thought, not its handmaiden.

The precision of naming takes away from the uniqueness of seeing.

The truth is always something that is told, not something that is known. If there were no speaking or writing, there would be no truth about anything. There would only be what is.

In order for sensation to accede to the objectivity of things, it must itself be changed into a thing. The agent of change is language: the sensations are turned into verbal objects.

It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood.

Facts do not speak.

There is no standard for truth. We cannot even agree on the meaning of words.

Words, as is well known, are the greatest foes of reality.

Opinions of language are as interesting as opinions of arithmetic.

There are no actions involved in 'beautiful.' It's such an inactive thing, and it's so subject to each individual's taste and appreciation. It's a lovely word, but I feel like it's been hijacked by really boring, dull people who don't understand how to use words.

Emotion' is a strange word.

Fake is, like, the worst word you could possibly use to describe anything, you know?

The world is out there, but descriptions of the world are not.

you can make mean anything.

For human words are like shadows, and shadows are incapable of explaining light and between shadow and light there is the opaque body from which words are born.

Everything we say is a story. But nothing we say is just a story.

One man's frankness is another man's vulgarity.

A thing is a thing, not what is said of a thing

Maybe happiness too is a metaphor invented on a day of boredom

The real technology -behind all our other technologies- is language. It actually creates the world our consciousness lives in.

The world is nothing but 'world-as-meaning.