Ludwig Wittgenstein Quotes

When philosophers use a word--"knowledge," "being," "object," "I," "proposition," "name"--and try to grasp the essence of the thing, one must always ask oneself: is the word ever actually used in this way in the language-game which is its original home?--What we do is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use.

For a large class of cases - though not for all - in which we employ the word meaning it can be explained thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language.

Philosophy may in no way interfere with the actual use of language; it can in the end only describe it.

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

Literature transforms and intensifies ordinary language, deviates systematically from everyday speech.

All philosophy is a 'critique of language' (though not in Mauthner's sense). It was Russell who performed the service of showing that the apparent logical form of a proposition need not be its real one.

Those who advocate common usage in philosophy sometimes speak in a manner that suggests the mystique of the 'common man.'

A sentence is made up of words, a statement is made in words.... Statements are made, words or sentences are used.

One cannot guess how a word functions. One has to look at its use and learn from that. But the difficulty is to remove the prejudice which stands in the way of doing this. It is not a stupid prejudice.

Most of the propositions and questions to be found in philosophical works are not false but nonsensical.

A laxity pervades the popular use of words.

Language is the tool of my trade -and I use them all - all the Englishes I grew up with

The year I began to say vahz instead of vase, a man I barely knew nearly accidentally killed me.

If Woody Guthrie set the bar for American songwriters, Bob Dylan jumped right over it. No one I know will ever come close to possessing the beauty of melody and the use of language that Dylan shares with us, with ease.

Words were her plague and words were her redemption.

There is always the danger in scientific work that some word or phrase will be used by different authors to express so many ideas and surmises that, unless redefined, it loses all real significance.

When I write characters, I need to hear their voice. As soon as I get them speaking, and I feel how they use language, I understand who they are and what they want.

One should use common words to say uncommon things

If you care about being thought credible and intelligent, do not use complex language where simpler language will do.

Every sign by itself seems dead. What gives it life?--In use it is alive. Is life breathed into it there?--Or is the use its life?

Some facts in life are immutable. One is, trust no-one who uses the word 'trope'.

If we use common words on a great occasion, they are the more striking, because they are felt at once to have a particular meaning, like old banners, or everyday clothes, hung up in a sacred place.

I am allowed to use plain English because everybody knows that I could use mathematical logic if I chose.

When any significant change takes place in the moral standards of a community, it is immediately reflected in a general shifting of the meanings of common words.

Rhetoric is rooted in an essential function of language itself, a function that is wholly realistic and continually born anew: the use of language as a symbolic means of inducing cooperation in beings that by nature respond to symbols.