Great Throughts Treasury

"When we can't think for ourselves, we can always quote."

"Where does our investigation get its importance from, since it seems only to destroy everything interesting, that is, all that is great and important? (As it were all the buildings, leaving behind only bits of stone and rubble.) What we are destroying is nothing but houses of cards and we are clearing up the ground of language on which they stand."

"Where two principles really do meet which cannot be reconciled with one another, then each man declares the other a fool and a heretic"

"When you are philosophizing you have to descend into primeval chaos and feel at home there."

"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."

"White must be the lightest color in a picture."

"Wishing is not acting. But willing is acting."

"Why in the world shouldn't they have regarded with awe and reverence that act by which the human race is perpetuated. Not every religion has to have St. Augustine's attitude to sex. Why even in our culture marriages are celebrated in a church, everyone present knows what is going to happen that night, but that doesn't prevent it being a religious ceremony."

"Words are deeds."

"Words and chess pieces are analogous; knowing how to use a word is like knowing how to move a chess piece. Now how do the rules enter into playing the game? What is the difference between playing the game and aimlessly moving the pieces? I do not deny there is a difference, but I want to say that knowing how a piece is to be used is not a particular state of mind which goes on while the game goes on. The meaning of a word is to be defined by the rules for its use, not by the feeling that attaches to the words."

"You say : The point isn't the word, but its meaning, and you think of the meaning as a thing of the same kind as the word, though also different from the word. Here the word, there the meaning."

"You sometimes see in a wind a piece of paper blowing about anyhow. Suppose the piece of paper could make the decision: ?Now I want to go this way.? I say: ?Queer, this paper always decides where it is to go, and all the time it is the wind that blows it. I know it is the wind that blows it.? That same force which moves it also in a different way moves its decisions."

"Wouldn?t one have to say, that there is no sharp boundary between propositions of logic and empirical propositions? The lack of sharpness is that of the boundary between rule and empirical proposition."

"You can't think decently if you're not willing to hurt yourself."

"You can have things now just as you choose. You only need to say how you want them. So (just) make a verbal picture, illustrate it as you choose ? by drawing comparisons etc.! Thus you can ? as it were ? prepare a blueprint. ? And now there remains the question how to work with it."

"You could attach prices to thoughts. Some cost a lot, some a little. And how does one pay for thoughts? The answer, I think, is: with courage."

"You can?t be reluctant to give up your lie and still tell the truth."

"You get tragedy where the tree, instead of bending, breaks."

"You learned the concept 'pain' when you learned language."

"You must always be puzzled by mental illness. The thing I would dread most, if I became mentally ill, would be your adopting a common sense attitude; that you could take it for granted that I was deluded."

"Your questions refer to words; so I have to talk about words."

"You won?t ? I really believe ? get too much out of reading it. Because you won?t understand it; the content will seem strange to you. In reality, it isn?t strange to you, for the point is ethical. I once wanted to give a few words in the foreword which now actually are not in it, which, however, I?ll write to you now because they might be a key for you: I wanted to write that my work consists of two parts: of the one which is here, and of everything which I have not written. And precisely this second part is the important one."