Ludwig Wittgenstein Quotes

People try to contain things by putting them into categories. I don't.

Justice and truth are too such subtle points that our tools are too blunt to touch them accurately.

The opposite of every truth is just as true.

Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in shape of a camel? Polonius: By the mass, and ‘tis like a camel, indeed. Hamlet: Methinks it is like a weasel. Polonius: It is backed like a weasel. Hamlet: Or like a whale? Polonius: Very like a whale.

Reality is infinitely diverse, compared with even the subtlest conclusions of abstract thought, and does not allow of clear-cut and sweeping distinctions. Reality resists classification.

What I am trying to do is to unmuddle the metaphysical.

Everything is true and not true about everything. That’s one thing I’ve learned.

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.

The reverse side of truth has a hundred thousand shapes and no defined limits.

For nothing was simply one thing.

I am very Aristotelian in approach - not in detail - so I always find I'm saying things that get people frustrated like 'It's a matter of balance and judgement'. To a lot of philosophers these are terrible words because they're admitting of vagueness and uncertainty. The more I've done philosophy, the more I've become convinced that that is the way it is.

Nothing in its essence is one way or the other.

For me, truth cracks open in the places where things do not cohere. That's how life is.

Critics should help people see for themselves; they should never try to define things, or impose their own explanations, though I admit that if... a critic's explanations serve to increase the general obscurity, that's all to the good.

It was good, it was bad. But it was real, and that's all you have.

If it had and answer, it wouldn't really be love, would it?

Love was that way. You could not render it in black or white. It always came down to the strange, blended shades of grey.

You see, in this world there is one awful thing, and that is that everyone has his reasons.

When one man speaks to another man who doesn't understand him, and when a man who's speaking no longer understands, it's metaphysics.

There is no such thing as an absolute truth to be discovered.

I was trying to unravel the complicated trigonometry of the radical thought that silence could make up the greatest lie ever told.

A moment might be a thousand different things.

Life is a paradox. Every truth has its counterpart which contradicts it; and every philosopher supplies the logic his own undoing.

Stop trying to figure it out. I love puzzles, but when I'm done putting together a puzzle, I feel accomplished, and then I wonder, "What's next?" Then I go start another puzzle. Life is a puzzle that I feel like we'll never fully put together. And I like that because, ultimately, I don't want to have life figured out and then wonder, "What's next?" That seems scary to me.

There are no whole truths: All truths are half-truths.