Ludwig Wittgenstein Giving Quotations

The problems are solved, not by giving new information, but by arranging what we have known since long.

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

Philosophy is not a body of doctrine but an activity. ...Without philosophy thoughts are, as it were, cloudy and indistinct: its task is to make them clear and to give them sharp boundaries.

Every sign by itself seems dead. What gives it life?--In use it is alive. Is life breathed into it there?--Or is the use its life?

You can't be reluctant to give up your lie and still tell the truth.

It is possible--indeed possible even according to the old conception of logic--to give in advance a description of all 'true' logical propositions. Hence there can never be surprises in logic.

I might say: if the place I want to get to could only be reached by way of a ladder, I would give up trying to get there. For the place I really have to get to is a place I must already be at now. Anything that I might reach by climbing a ladder does not interest me.

Suppose someone follows the series "1,3,5,7, ..", and in writing the series 2x+1; and he asked himself "But am I always doing the same thing, or something different every time?" If from one day to the next someone promises: "Tomorrow I will give up smoking", does he say the same thing every day, or every day something different?