Philosophical Investigations Quotes

“The problems are solved, not by giving new information, but by arranging what we have known since long.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

“Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

“A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

“If a lion could speak, we could not understand him.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

“If I have exhausted the justifications, I have reached bedrock and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say: 'This is simply what I do.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

“The face is the soul of the body.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

“So in the end, when one is doing philosophy, one gets to the point where one would like just to emit an inarticulate sound.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

“Language is a labyrinth of paths. You approach from one side and know your way about; you approach the same place from another side and no longer know your way about.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

“the meaning of a word is its use in the language.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

“a nothing will serve just as well as a something about which nothing could be said.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

“Remember that we sometimes demand explanations for the sake not of their content, but of their form. Our requirement is an architectural one; the explanation a kind of sham corbel that supports nothing.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

“Think, for example, of the words which you perhaps utter in this space of time. They are no longer part of this language. And in different surroundings the institution of money doesn’t exist either.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

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

For it cannot give any foundation either.
It leaves everything as it is.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

“A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

“In this sort of predicament, always ask yourself: How did we learn the meaning of this word ("good", for instance)? From what sort of examples? In what language-games? Then it will be easier for you to see that the word must have a family of meanings.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

“The fact that we cannot write down all the digits of pi is not a human shortcoming, as mathematicians sometimes think.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

“For philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

“What people accept as justification shows how they think and live.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

“The philosopher's treatment of a question is like the treatment of an illness.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

“Review the multiplicity of language-games in the following examples, and in others:

Giving orders, and obeying them—
Describing the appearance of an object, or giving its measurements—
Constructing an object from a description (a drawing)—
Reporting an event—
Speculating about an event—
Forming or teasing a hypothesis—
Presenting the results of an experiment in tables and diagrams—
Making up a story; and reading it—
Singing catches—
Guessing riddles—
Making riddles—
Making a joke; telling it—
Solving a problem in practical arithmetic—
Translating from one language into another—
Asking, thanking, cursing, greeting, praying.

—It is interesting to compare the multiplicity of the tools in language and of the ways they are used, the multiplicity of kinds of word and sentence, with what logicians have said about the structure of language. (Including the author of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.)”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

“303. "I can only believe that someone else is in pain, but I know it if I am."—Yes: one can make the decision to say "I believe he is in pain" instead of "He is in pain". But that is all.——What looks like an explanation here, or like a statement about a mental process, is in truth an exchange of one expression for another which, while we are doing philosophy, seems the more appropriate one.
Just try—in a real case—to doubt someone else's fear or pain.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

“This is connected with the conception of naming as a process that is, so to speak, occult. Naming seems to be a _strange_ connection of a word with an object. -- And such a strange connection really obtains, particularly when a philosopher tries to fathom _the_ relation between name and what is named by staring at an object in front of him and repeating a name, or even the word "this", innumerable time. For philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday. And _then_ we may indeed imagine naming to be some remarkable mental act, as it were the baptism of an object. And we can also say the word "this" _to_ the object, as it were _address_ the object as "this" -- a strange use of this word, which perhaps occurs only when philosophizing.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

“In order to find the real artichoke, we divested it of its leaves.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

“A main source of our failure to understand is that we don’t have an overview of the use of our words. – Our grammar is deficient in surveyability. A surveyable representation produces precisely that kind of understanding which consists in ‘seeing connections’. …
The concept of a surveyable representation is of fundamental significance for us. It characterizes the way we represent things, how we look at matters. (Is this a ‘Weltanschauung’?)”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

“Language is a labyrinth of paths. You approach from one side and know your way about; you approach the same place from another side and no longer know your way about.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

“The philosopher treats a question; like an illness.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

“Let us not forget this: when 'I raise my arm', my arm goes up. And the problem arises: what is left over if I subtract the fact that my arm goes up from the fact that I raise my arm?”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

“To imagine a language means to imagine a form of life.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

“What is internal is hidden from us." The future is hidden from us. But does the astronomer think like this when he calculates an eclipse of the sun?

If I see someone writhing in pain with evident cause I do not think: all the same, his feelings are hidden from me.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

“And nothing is more wrong-headed than calling meaning a mental activity! Unless, that is, one is setting out to produce confusion. (It would also be possible to speak of an activity of butter when it rises in price, and if no problems are produced by this it is harmless.)”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations