Ludwig Wittgenstein Quotes

Unlike the ambiguity of life, the ambiguity of language does reach a limit.

All our work, our whole life is a matter of semantics, because words are the tools with which we work, the material out of which laws are made, out of which the Constitution was written. Everything depends on our understanding of them.

A philosopher once said, 'Half of good philosophy is good grammar.'

Thus, we see that one of the obvious origins of human disagreement lies in the use of noises for words.

Like everything metaphysical the harmony between thought and reality is to be found in the grammar of the language.

Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.

Men substitute words for reality and then argue about the words.

Our language has become a tired and inefficient thing in the hands of journalists and writers who have nothing to say.

All myth is an enriched pattern, a two-faced proposition, allowing its operator to say one thing and mean another, to lead a double life. Hence the notion found early in ancient thought that all poets are liars. And from the true lies of poetry trickled out a question. What really connects words and things?

The process of philosophizing, to my mind, consists mainly in passing from those obvious, vague, ambiguous things, that we feel quite sure of, to something precise, clear, definite, which by reflection and analysis we find is involved in the vague thing that we start from, and is, so to speak, the real truth of which that vague thing is a sort of shadow.

A philosophical mythology lies concealed in language, which breaks out again at every moment, no matter how cautious we may be.

Whether the person should then be called "an intellectual" seems to reduce the issue to a question of terminology.

We gave you a perfectly good language and you f***ed up.

A babble of words that no one understands now fills the airwaves, and language loses all meaning as we sink slowly, mindlessly, into herstory rather than history because most rapists are men, aren't they?

The New Oxford Dictionary has declared Sarah Palin's word 'refudiate' to be the 2010 Word of the Year. Palin was honored and said she would do her best to 'dismangle' the English language.

It is commonly thought that everything that is can be put into words.

Quand celui à qui l'on parle ne comprend pas et celui qui parle ne se comprend pas, c'est de la métaphysique When he to whom a person speaks does not understand, and he who speaks does not understand himself, that is metaphysics.

I like that confusion when people are speaking in the same language but still can't understand each other. It's also usually my experience of being in America - when I speak no one can understand what I'm saying.

Language is the most beautiful and destructive thing because it allows you to express yourself, but it totally confuses everything.

A false or misunderstood word may create as much disaster as a sudden thoughtless act.

Words never mean what we want them to mean.

Why, you might just as well say that, I see what I eat, is the same as, I eat what I see.

How astonishing it is that language can almost mean, and frightening that it does not quite.

Must a name mean something?" Alice asked doubtfully. Of course it must," Humpty Dumpty said with a short laugh; "my name means the shape I am - and a good handsome shape it is, too. With a name like yours, you might be any shape, almost.

I had thought that words were instruments of precision. Now I know that they devour the world, leaving nothing in its place.