Imagine a person whose memory could not retain what the word 'pain' meant—so that he constantly called different things by that name—but nevertheless used the word in a way fitting in with the usual symptoms and presuppositions of ‘pain’—in short he uses it as we all do. Here I should like to say: a wheel that can be turned though nothing else moves with it, is not part of the mechanism

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

In the middle of a conversation, someone says to me out of the blue: "I wish you luck." I am astonished; but later I realize that these words connect up with his thoughts about me. And now they do not strike me as meaningless anymore.

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

I realize then that the disappearance of a culture does not signify the disappearance of human value, but simply of certain means of expressing this value, yet the fact remains that I have no sympathy for the current European civilization and do not understand its goals, if it has any. So I am really writing for friends who are scattered throughout the corners of the globe.

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

I sit astride life like a bad rider on a horse. I only owe it to the horse's good nature that I am not thrown off at this very moment.

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

I think one of the things you and I have to learn is that we have to live without the consolation of belonging to a Church.... Of one thing I am certain. The religion of the future will have to be extremely ascetic, and by that I don't mean just going without food and drink.

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

It is difficult to describe paths of thought where there are already many paths laid down, and not fall into one of the grooves

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

It is not humanly possible to gather immediately from it what the logic of language is. Language disguises thought.

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

It is now how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it (the world) exists at all.....

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

It is obvious that an imagined world, however different it may be from the real one, must have something - a form - in common with it.

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

It is so characteristic, that just when the mechanics of reproduction are so vastly improved, there are fewer and fewer people who know how the music should be played.

— Ludwig Wittgenstein