Wittgenstein’s Descent

Ludwig Wittgenstein by Ben Richards

This aspect of Wittgenstein’s writings befits the School of No Media.

The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. All I know is what I have words for.
Language disguises the thought.
Someone who knows too much finds it hard not to lie.
We are asleep. Our Life is a dream. But we wake up sometimes, just enough to know that we are dreaming.
‘You’d be surprised’ wouldn’t be a bad motto.
An entire mythology is stored within our language.
Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.
One of the most misleading representational techniques in our language is the use of the word ‘I.’
At the core of all well-founded belief lies belief that is unfounded.
You can’t think decently if you’re not willing to hurt yourself.
A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably.
What can be shown, cannot be said.
Knowledge is in the end based on acknowledgement.
Philosophy, as we use the word, is a fight against the fascination which forms of expression exert upon us.
In art it is hard to say anything as good as saying nothing.
The philosopher is not a citizen of any community of ideas, that is what makes him a philosopher.
When you are philosophizing you have to descend into primeval chaos and feel at home there.
Sometimes, in doing philosophy, one just wants to utter an inarticulate sound.
How hard I find it to see what is right in front of my eyes!
The human gaze has a power of conferring value on things; but it makes them cost more too.
Is my understanding only blindness to my own lack of understanding? It often seems so to me.
Only describe, don’t explain.
I want to regard man here as an animal; as a primitive being to which one grants instinct but not ratiocination. As a creature in a primitive state..
When we can’t think for ourselves, we can always quote.