Ludwig Wittgenstein Quotes

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

I realised I'd spent a lot of time in my poetry trying to find a way of talking about that whereof we cannot speak.

About what one can not speak, one must remain silent.

Whatever can't be expressed might as well not exist.

No one's mouth is big enough to utter the whole thing.

There is nothing at all that can be talked about adequately, and the whole art of poetry is to say what can't be said.

Silences have a climax, when you have got to speak.

If you haven't read you don't have the voice. The lack of voice eliminates experience.

Human knowledge is dark and uncertain; philosophy is dark, astrology is dark, and geometry is dark.

To express to you in mere words, our personal feelings on this occasion you must know to be impossible, and particularly so for one who normally has to describe only things outside himself.

Not everything has a name. Some things lead us into a realm beyond words.

There has to reach a point where you've said enough.

Philosophy begins in wonder.

I am concerned, rather, that there should not be more things dreamt of in my philosophy than there actually are in heaven and earth.

All our knowledge falls with the bounds of experience.

Books will speak plain when counselors blanch.

Logic pervades the world; the limits of the world are also the limits of logic.

One feels 'the dearth of human words, the roughness of mortal speech' in trying to describe things intangible.

It is not that the meaning cannot be explained. But there are certain meanings that are lost forever the moment they are explained in words.

Silence is the only language god speaks.

After a lifetime of silence, it is difficult then to speak.

The disciples were absorbed in a discussion of Lao-Tzu's dictum: "Those who know, do not say; Those who say, do not know." When the master entered, they asked him what the words meant. Said the master, "Which of you knows the fragrance of a rose?" All of them indicated that they knew. Then he said, "Put it into words." All of them were silent.

Those who know it do not speak about it. Those who speak about it do not know it.

The best things cannot be told because they transcend thought. The second best are misunderstood because they are the thoughts that are supposed to refer to that which cannot be thought about. The third best are what we talk about.

Name, no, nothing is nameable, tell, no, nothing can be told, what then, I don't know, I shouldn't have begun.