That the world is, is the mystical.
Here the term ‘language-game’ is meant to bring into prominence the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, of a form of life.
What is troubling us is the tendency to believe that the mind is like a little man within.
The fact that we can describe the motions of the world using Newtonian mechanics tell us nothing about the world. The fact that we do, does tell us something about the world.
Philosophy limits the thinkable and therefore the unthinkable.
Philosophy, as we use the word, is a fight against the fascination which forms of expression exert upon us.
A good guide will take you through the more important streets more often than he takes you down side streets; a bad guide will do the opposite. In philosophy I’m a rather bad guide.
Black seems to make a colour cloudy, but darkness doesn’t. A ruby could thus keep getting darker without ever becoming cloudy; but if it became blackish red, it would become cloudy.
Don’t for heaven’s sake, be afraid of talking nonsense! But you must pay attention to your nonsense.
Nothing is more important for teaching us to understand the concepts we have than to construct fictitious ones.
How hard I find it to see what is right in front of my eyes!
It is not humanly possible to gather immediately from it what the logic of language is. 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.
When we think about the future of the world, we always have in mind its being where it would be if it continued to move as we see it moving now. We do not realize that it moves not in a straight line and that its direction changes constantly.
Philosophy may in no way interfere with the actual use of language; it can in the end only describe it.
To understand a sentence means to understand a language. To understand a language means to be master of a technique.
The classifications made by philosophers and psychologists are like trying to classify clouds by their shape.
Philosophy can be said to consist of three activities: to see the commonsense answer, to get yourself so deeply into the problem that the common sense answer is unbearable, and to get from that situation back to the commonsense answer.
This sort of thing has got to be stopped. Bad philosophers are like slum landlords. It’s my job to put them out of business.
Could one imagine a stone’s having consciousness? And if anyone can do so-why should that not merely prove that such image-mongery is of no interest to us?