Tractatus Quotes

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

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.

We feel that even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all.

I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.

Ethics and aesthetics are one.

Language disguises thought.

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.

I give no sources, because it is indifferent to me whether what I have thought has already been thought before me by another.

The world of the happy man is a different one from that of the unhappy man.

Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen.

Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly. Everything that can be said can be said clearly.

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.

Belief in the causal nexus is superstition.

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

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.

A tautology's truth is certain, a proposition's possible, a contradiction's impossible.

Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist.

There can never be surprises in logic.

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.

It is not humanly possible to gather immediately from it what the logic of language is. Language disguises thought.

It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists

Our life is endless in the way that our visual field is without limit.

There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.

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.

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.

Philosophy is not a body of doctrine but an activity.

Roughly speaking: objects are colourless

That of which we cannot speak, we must pass over in silence

A logical picture of facts is a thought.

The agreement or disagreement or its sense with reality constitutes its truth or falsity.

Commenting on his "Tractatus"...It consists of two parts: the one written here plus all that I have not written. And it is precisely the 2nd part that is the important one.

it is the function of a poet to relate not things that have happened, but things that may happen,

a poet must be a composer of plots rather than of verses,

All numbers in logic must be capable of justification.   Or rather it must become plain that there are no numbers in logic.   There are no pre-eminent numbers.

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.

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.

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.

Citizens are not born, but made.

Investigations “eliminated solipsism but not the horror.” The only difference between this new predicament and that of the Tractatus was that rather than being trapped alone in our private thoughts, we were trapped together, with other people, in the institution of language.

The world is independent of my will.

The greatest good is the knowledge of the union which the mind has with the whole nature.

The silent adjustments to understand colloquial language are enormously complicated.

What finds its reflection in language, language cannot represent. What expresses itself in language, we cannot express by means of language.

6.41 Der Sinn der Welt muss ausserhalb ihrer liegen.

It is obvious that an imagined world, however different it may be from the real one, must have something - a form - in common with it.

The solution of logical problems must be neat for they set the standard of neatness.

Most propositions and questions, that have been written about philosophical matters, are not false, but senseless. ... (They are of the same kind as the question whether the Good is more or less identical than the Beautiful.)

The book deals with the problems of philosophy and shows, as I believe, that the method of formulating these problems rests on the misunderstanding of the logic of our language.

Es ist offenbar, dass auch eine von der wirklichen noch so verschieden gedachte Welt Etwas -- eine Form -- mit der wirklichen gemein haben muss.

Philosophy should make clear and delimit sharply the thoughts which otherwise are, as it were, opaque and blurred.

A right-hand glove could be put on the left hand if it could be turned round in four-dimensional space.

It is clear that ethics cannot be expressed. Ethics are transcendental. (Ethics and æsthetics are one.)

Philosophy limits the disputable sphere of natural science.

In practice, language is always more or less vague, so that what we assert is never quite precise.

Self-evidence, of which Russell has said so much, can only be discarded in logic by language itself preventing every logical mistake. That logic is a priori consists in the fact that we cannot think illogically.

5.641 [...] Das philosophische Ich ist nicht der Mensch, nicht der menschliche Körper, oder die menschliche Seele, von der die Psychologie handelt, sondern das metaphysische Subjekt, die Grenze - nicht ein Teil - der Welt.

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.

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.

How did Wittgenstein get to this point? The Tractatus is concerned with a disarmingly basic question: How is language possible? When we consider the world around us, everything seems to interact with everything else causally, in accordance with the laws of nature. The exception is a certain strange thing we call language, which somehow manages to interact with other things in the world in an entirely different way: it represents them meaningfully. The ability to represent things allow us to communicate, enables us to deal with things that are not actually present to us, and provides the fabric of our mental life, our daily thoughts. But how is it, exactly, that language produces meaning?

The essential business of language is to assert or deny facts. Given

He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it

we cannot think of any object apart from the possibility of its connexion with other things.

Logical research means the investigation of all regularity. And outside logic all is accident.

The thought is the significant proposition

It used to be said that God could create anything except what would be contrary to the laws of logic. The truth is that we could not say what an "illogical" world would look like.

I conceive the proposition—like Frege and Russell—as a function of the expressions contained in it.

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.)

The right method of philosophy would be this. To say nothing except what can be said, i.e. the propositions of natural science, i.e. something that has nothing to do with philosophy: and then always, when someone else wished to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had given no meaning to certain signs in his propositions. This method would be unsatisfying to the other - he would not have the feeling that we were teaching him philosophy - but it would be the only strictly correct method. My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.) He must surmount these propositions; then he sees the world rightly. Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

We feel that even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all. Of course there is then no question left, and just this is the answer.

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.

The same operation which makes “q” from “p”, makes “r” from “q”, and so on. This can only be expressed by the fact that “p”, “q”, “r”, etc., are variables which give general expression to certain formal relations.

The gramophone record, the musical thought, the score, the waves of sound, all stand to one another in that pictorial internal relation, which holds between language and the world. To all of them the logical structure is common. (Like the two youths, their two horses and their lilies in the story. They are all in a certain sense one.)

2.223 In order to discover whether the picture is true or false we must compare it with reality. 2.224 It cannot be discovered from the picture alone whether it is true or false. 2.225 There is no picture which is a priori true.

The “experience” which we need to understand logic is not that such and such is the case, but that something is; but that is no experience.   Logic precedes every experience—that something is so.   It is before the How, not before the What.

God creates the world out of itself, out of “nothing”. God is not a conscious superbeing that creates the world. God is an astonishing hive mind, composed of countless individual mental cells (monads), which dialectically come to consciousness of what they are through their mutual interactions.

A particular method of symbolizing may be unimportant, but it is always important that this is a possible method of symbolizing. And this happens as a rule in philosophy: The single thing proves over and over again to be unimportant, but the possibility of every single thing reveals something about the nature of the world.

The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is, and everything happens as it does happen: in it no value exists—and if it did exist, it would have no value. If there is any value that does have value, it must lie outside the whole sphere of what happens and is the case. For all that happens and is the case is accidental. What makes it non-accidental cannot lie within the world, since if it did it would itself be accidental. It must lie outside the world.

El disco gramofónico, el pensamiento musical, la notación musical, las ondas sonoras, están todos entre sí en esa relación interna figurativa que se da entre lenguaje y mundo.

Tutto ciò che si può dire lo si può dire chiaramente. Su ciò di cui non si può parlare si deve tacere.

Nicht wie die Welt ist, ist das Mystische, sondern daß sie ist.

What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.

The object of philosophy is the logical clarification of thoughts. Philosophy is not a theory but an activity. A

The world is the totality of facts, not of things.

In order to know an object, I must know not its external but all its internal qualities.

The logical forms are anumerical. Therefore there are in logic no pre-eminent numbers, and therefore there is no philosophical monism or dualism, etc.

Contradiction is the external limit of the propositions, tautology their substanceless centre.

The logic of the world which the propositions of logic show in tautologies, mathematics shows in equations.

The form is the possibility of the structure.

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.

Logic precedes every experience—that something is so.

Ludwig Wittgenstein once greeted me with the question: »Why do people say that it was natural to think that the sun went round the earth rather than that the earth turned on its axis?” I replied: »I suppose, because it looked as if the sun went round the earth.” »Well,« he asked, »what would it have looked like if it had looked as if the earth turned on its axis?«

The “Empirical Fallacy” is that experience is knowledge when in fact it is just experience. A person could have infinite experiences and literally know nothing about what reality is. A person could perform a trillion observations and have no more clue about what reality is than someone performing divination in the ancient world, or a cockroach. It is not perceptualism that has led to humanity’s body of knowledge, it is conceptualism. Humanity doesn’t perceive better today, it conceives better, and that is purely thanks to mathematics, reason and logic.

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.

Just as we cannot think of spatial objects at all apart from space, or temporal objects apart from time, so we cannot think of any object apart from the possibility of its connexion with other things.

We here touch one instance of Wittgenstein’s fundamental thesis, that it is impossible to say anything about the world as a whole, and that whatever can be said has to be about bounded portions of the world.

The specification of all true elementary propositions describes the world completely. The world is completely described by the specification of all elementary propositions plus the specification, which of them are true and which false.

Something refused to come into focus in my thinking. Indistinctly, as though in a fog, shapes moved toward me and retreated just beyond cognition. But that getting a hold of things is the uncertainty. As the Tractatus says right at the beginning, “The world is everything that is the case.” It seemed as though the Mammy≈Divas® were just like Steve Jobs, trying to have reality bent to their own wills. Objectively, the iPhone was a muddle of mysticism and logic—breakable glass, non-ergonomic design, lousy battery life, lousy irreplaceable battery, lousy headphone jack, lousy virtual keyboard, lousy email, lousy memory, lousy lice, etc., etc, and an interface that you had to adapt to by pretending as an article of faith that no adaptation was required. The Mammy≈Divas® promised a seamless racial interface—eternal blackness ordered and majestic. They put a benign face on their lust for panoptic power. They promised to discipline and punish with pancakes.

6.4 All propositions are of equal value. 6.41 The sense of the world must lie outside the world. 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.   If there is a value which is of value, it must lie outside all happening and being-so. For all happening and being-so is accidental.   What makes it non-accidental cannot lie in the world, for otherwise this would again be accidental.   It must lie outside the world.

A logically perfect language has rules of syntax which prevent nonsense, and has single symbols which always have a definite and unique meaning. Mr Wittgenstein is concerned with the conditions for a logically perfect language—not that any language is logically perfect, or that we believe ourselves capable, here and now, of constructing a logically perfect language, but that the whole function of language is to have meaning, and it only fulfils this function in proportion as it approaches to the ideal language which we postulate

First, there is the problem what actually occurs in our minds when we use language with the intention of meaning something by it; this problem belongs to psychology. Secondly, there is the problem as to what is the relation subsisting between thoughts, words, or sentences, and that which they refer to or mean; this problem belongs to epistemology. Thirdly, there is the problem of using sentences so as to convey truth rather than falsehood; this belongs to the special sciences dealing with the subject-matter of the sentences in question. Fourthly, there is the question: what relation must one fact (such as a sentence) have to another in order to be capable of being a symbol for that other? This last is a logical question,