A collection of my favorite statements, howls, and threats by thinkers, writers, philosophers, poets, heretics, etc.
In a certain sense, infinite divisibility means that space is indivisible, that it is not affected by any division. That it is above such things: it doesn’t consist of parts. Much as if it were saying to reality: you may do what you like in me (you can be divided as often as you like in me.) Space gives to reality an infinite opportunity for division.
— LW
Perchance you who pronounce my sentence are in greater fear than I who receive it.
— Giordano Bruno
I cleave the heavens, and soar to the infinite. What others see from afar, I leave far behind me.
— Giordano Bruno
And the true philosophers are always occupied in the practice of dying, wherefore also to them least of all men is death terrible.
— Socrates, Phaedo
Prove all things. Hold fast to that which is good.
— First Thessalonians 5:21
Scepticism is not irrefutable, but obviously nonsensical, when it tries to raise doubts where no questions can be asked. For doubt only can exist where a question exists, a question only where an answer exists, and an answer only where something can be said.
— TLP, Wittgenstein
Obviously, no one would freely choose to become a philosopher – they are, unfortunately, born that way.
— Steven Colbert (?)
5.1362 The freedom of the will consists in the impossibility of knowing actions that still lie in the future. We could know them only if causality were an inner necessity like that of logical inference. The connexion between knowledge and what is known is that of logical necessity. (‘A knows that p is the case’, has no sense if p is a tautology.)
— Wittgenstein, Tractatus
A mathematician is bound to be horrified by my mathematical comments, since he has always been trained to avoid indulging in thoughts and doubts of the kind I develop. He has learned to regard them as something contemptible and… he has acquired a revulsion from them as infantile. That is to say, I trot out all the problems that a child learning arithmetic, etc., finds difficult, the problems that education represses without solving. I say to those repressed doubts: you are quite correct, go on asking, demand clarification!
— Wittgenstein, PG 381
4.003 Most propositions and questions, that have been written about on philosophical matters are not false, but senseless. We cannot, therefore, answer questions of this kind but only state their senselessness. Most questions and propositions of philosophers result from the fact that we do not understand the logic of our language. ( They are of the kind of question whether the Good is more or less identical to the Beautiful. ) And it is not surprising that the deepest problems are in fact not problems at all.
— Wittgenstein, TLP
In philosophy matters are not simple enough for us to say ‘Let’s get a rough idea,’ for we do not know the country except by knowing the connections between the roads. So I suggest repetition as a means of surveying the connections.
— Wittgenstein
Yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upwards.
— Book of Job
Distrust of grammar is the first requisite of philosophizing.
— Wittgenstein, Notebooks
I don’t know why we are here, but I’m pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.
— Wittgenstein
If you can’t say it clearly, you don’t understand it yourself.
— John Searle