The World and Life are one.
Our civilization is characterized by the word progress. Progress is its form rather than making progress being one of its features. Typically it constructs. It is occupied with building an ever more complicated structure. And even clarity is sought only as a means to this end, not as an end in itself. For me on the contrary clarity, perspicuity are valuable in themselves.
The philosopher’s treatment of a question is like the treatment of an illness.
Certainty is as it were a tone of voice in which one declares how things are, but one does not infer from the tone of voice that one is justified.
We have got onto slippery ice where there is no friction and so in a certain sense the conditions are ideal, but also, just because of that, we are unable to walk. We want to walk so we need friction. Back to the rough ground!
Es ist offenbar, dass auch eine von der wirklichen noch so verschieden gedachte Welt Etwas – eine Form – mit der wirklichen gemein haben muss.
We never arrive at fundamental propositions in the course of our investigation; we get to the boundary of language which stops us from asking further questions. We don’t get to the bottom of things, but reach a point where we can go no further, where we cannot ask further questions.
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.
But doesn’t it come out here that knowledge is related to a decision?
There are, indeed, things that are inexpressible. They show themselves. They are what is mystical.
But all propositions of logic say the same thing. That is, nothing.
The essential business of language is to assert or deny facts. Given.
Any serious philosophy can be described entirely through jokes.
Another alternative would have been to give you what’s called a popular-scientific lecture, that is a lecture intended to make you believe that you understand a thing which actually you don’t understand, and to gratify what I believe to be on of the lowest desires of modern people, namely the superficial curiosity about the latest discoveries of science.
Conscience is the voice of God.
How could human behaviour be described? Surely only by showing the actions of a variety of humans, as they are all mixed up together. Not what one man is doing now, but the whole hurly-burly, is the background against which we see an action, and it determines our judgment, our concepts, and our reactions.
Philosophy limits the disputable sphere of natural science.
Some people’s taste is to an educated taste as is the visual impression received by a purblind eye to that of a normal eye. Where a normal eye will see something clearly articulated, a weak eye will see a blurred patch of colour.
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.
Perhaps you regard this thinking about myself as a waste of time – but how can I be a logician before I’m a human being! Far the most important thing is to settle accounts with myself!