Ludwig Wittgenstein Quotes

Intellectualism' is the belief that our mind comes upon a world complete in itself, and has the duty of ascertaining its contents; but has no power of re-determining its character, for that is already given.

Every man feels that perception gives him an invincible belief of the existence of that which he perceives; and that this belief is not the effect of reasoning, but the immediate consequence of perception. When philosophers have wearied themselves and their readers with their speculations upon this subject, they can neither strengthen this belief, nor weaken it; nor can they shew how it is produced. It puts the philosopher and the peasant upon a level; and neither of them can give any other reason for believing his senses, than that he finds it impossible for him to do otherwise.

Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all.

I think that reality exists and that it's knowable.

Every day, I read books on philosophy and science fiction and human consciousness.

There are no eternal facts, as there are no absolute truths.

There's nothing you can know that isn't known.

Philosophy is an elegant thing, if anyone modestly meddles with it; but if they are conversant with it more than is becoming, it corrupts them.

I might as well doubt of my own being, as of the being of those things I actually see and feel.

Democritus says, "But we know nothing really; for truth lies deep down".

Philosophy cannot be taught; it is the application of the sciences to truth.

The Study of philosophy is not that we may know what men have thought, but what the truth of things is.

One of the main reasons for the existence of philosophy is not that it enables you to find truth (it can never do that) but that it does provide you a refuge for definitions.

Can I reject everything my brain experienced? Is intellectual understanding any understanding at all?

Philosophy, from the earliest times, has made greater claims, and achieved fewer results, than any other branch of learning.

What I always liked about Socrates was his insistence on questioning things for the sake of reaching some sort of clarity - even if it is only clarity about the gaps in our knowledge.

I secretly think reality exists so we can speculate about it.

Intuition and concepts constitute... the elements of all our knowledge, so that neither concepts without an intuition in some way corresponding to them, nor intuition without concepts, can yield knowledge.

Man can embody truth but he cannot know it.

The quest of the absolute leads into the four-dimensional world.

Apart from the known and the unknown, what else is there?

I believe in general in a dualism between facts and the ideas of those facts in human heads.

What is the meaning of the togetherness of the perceiving mind, in that peculiar modification of perceiving which makes it perceive not a star but a tree, and the tree itself, is a problem for philosophy.

All human knowledge takes the form of interpretation.

Belief and knowledge are considered to be two different things. But they are not.