Ludwig Wittgenstein Quotes

Doubt is not below knowledge, but above it.

Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance.

There are two threats to reason, the opinion that one knows the truth about the most important things and the opinion that there is no truth about them. Both of these opinions are fatal to philosophy; the first asserts that the quest for truth is unnecessary, while the second asserts that it is impossible. The Socratic knowledge of ignorance, which I take to be the beginning point of all philosophy, defines the sensible middle ground between two extremes.

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.

There's no such thing as 'facts of life'. Only standing theories that haven't been disproved as of yet.

So far as hypotheses are concerned, let no one expect anything certain from astronomy, which cannot furnish it, lest he accept as the truth ideas conceived for another purpose, and depart from this study a greater fool than when he entered it.

Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality.

I always admired Niels Bohr for uttering his opinions like one perpetually groping and never like one in the possession of definite truth.

In philosophy you're never 100% sure. You're always undermining what you think you know. That's always been my philosophy and my intellectual ethos.

Philosophy is explicitness, generality, orientation and assessment. That which one would insinuate, thereof one must speak.

I did not imitate the skeptics who doubt only for doubting's sake, and pretend to be always undecided; on the contrary, my whole intention was to arrive at a certainty, and to dig away the drift and the sand until I reached the rock or the clay beneath.

For me now, what I've come to is, we don't know anything.

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

On the one hand, philosophy is to keep us thinking about things that we may come to know, and on the other hand to keep us modestly aware of how much that seems like knowledge isn't knowledge

Il n'est pas certain que tout soit incertain. (Translation: It is not certain that everything is uncertain.)

Where doubt there truth is - 'tis her shadow.

Truth is something that we can attempt to doubt, and then perhaps, after much exertion, discover that part of the doubt is not justified.

You know that you know nothing. Find out that knowledge.

He who doubts, knows - knows as much as can be known.

I have teken refuge in the doctrine that advises one not to seek tranquility in certainty but in permanently suspended judgement.

It is precisely in knowing its limits that philosophy consists.

Their [the Skeptics'] way of speaking is: "I settle nothing. . . . I do not understand it. . . . Nothing seems true that may not seem false." Their sacramental word is . . . , which is to say, I suspend my judgment.

Socrates' way of life is the consequence of his recognition that we can know what it is that we do not know about the most important things and that we are by nature obliged to seek that knowledge.

Philosophy, the love of Wisdom, is at the very bottom defence against the incomprehensible.

Just because an idea is true doesn't mean it can be proved. And just because an idea can be proved doesn't mean it's true.