Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Quotes

“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. Our life has no end in the way in which our visual field has no limits.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“We feel that even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“Ethics and aesthetics are one.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“Language disguises thought.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“For an answer which cannot be expressed the question too cannot be expressed.

The riddle does not exist.

If a question can be put at all, then it can also be answered.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“I give no sources, because it is indifferent to me
whether what I have thought has already been
thought before me by another.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“The world of the happy man is a different one from that of the unhappy man.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“Language disguises the thought; so that from the external form of the clothes one cannot infer the form of the thought they clothe, because the external form of the clothes is constructed with quite another object than to let the form of the body be recognized.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly. Everything that can be said can be said clearly.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“The temporal immortality of the soul of man, that is to say, its eternal survival also after death, is not only in no way guaranteed, but this assumption in the first place will not do for us what we always tried to make it do. Is a riddle solved by the fact that I survive forever? Is this eternal life not as enigmatic as our present one? The solution of the riddle of life in space and time lies outside space and time.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“Belief in the causal nexus is superstition.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“6.4311
Der Tod ist kein Ereignis des Lebens. Den Tod erlebt man nicht.
Wenn man unter Ewigkeit nicht unendliche Zeitdauer, sondern Unzeitlichkeit versteht, dann lebt der ewig, der in der Gegenwart lebt.
Unser Leben ist ebenso endlos, wie unser Gesichtsfeld grenzenlos ist.


6.4311
Death is not an event of life. Death is not lived through.
If by eternity is understood not endless temporal duration but timelessness, then he lives eternally who lives in the present.
Our life is endless in the way that our visual field is without limit.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“Der Zweck der Philosophie ist die logische Klärung der Gedanken.
Die Philosophie ist keine Lehre, sondern eine Tätigkeit.
Ein philosophisches Werk besteht wesentlich aus Erläuterungen.
Das Resultat der Philosophie sind nicht »philosophische Sätze«, sondern das Klarwerden von Sätzen.
Die Philosophie soll die Gedanken, die sonst, gleichsam, trübe und verschwommen sind, klar machen und scharf abgrenzen.

4.112
The object of philosophy is the logical clarification of thoughts.
Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.
A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations.
The result of philosophy is not a number of "philosophical propositions", but to make propositions clear.
Philosophy should make clear and delimit sharply the thoughts which otherwise are, as it were, opaque and blurred.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“Most of the propositions and questions to be found in philosophical works are not false but nonsensical.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“A tautology's truth is certain, a proposition's possible, a contradiction's impossible.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“In the world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it, there is no value, - and if there were, it would be of no value.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“5.6 The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.
5.61 Logic fills the world: the limits of the world are also its limits.
We cannot therefore say in logic: This and this there is in the world, that there is not.
For that would apparently presuppose that we exclude certain possibilities, and this cannot be the case since otherwise logic must get outside the limits of the world : that is, if it could consider these limits from the other side also.
What we cannot think, that we cannot think: we cannot therefore say what we cannot think.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico Philosophicus

“Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“There can never be surprises in logic.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“It is not humanly possible to gather immediately from it what the logic of language is. Language disguises thought.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“Roughly speaking: to say of two things that they are identical is nonsense, and to say of one thing that it is identical with itself is to say nothing.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“Our life is endless in the way that our visual field is without limit.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“Philosophy is not a body of doctrine but an activity.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“Roughly speaking: objects are colourless”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“This book will perhaps only be understood by those who have themselves already thought the thoughts which are expressed in it-or similar thoughts. It is therefore not a text-book. Its object would be attained if it afforded pleasure to one who read it with understanding.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico Philosophicus

“That of which we cannot speak, we must pass over in silence”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus