A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.
I am sitting with a philosopher in the garden; he says again and again 'I know that that’s a tree', pointing to a tree that is near us. Someone else arrives and hears this, and I tell him: 'This fellow isn’t insane. We are only doing philosophy.
Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.
I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
In philosophy it is always good to put a question instead of an answer to a question. For an answer to the philosophical question may easily be unfair; disposing of it by means of another question is not.
Philosophy is like trying to open a safe with a combination lock: each little adjustment of the dials seems to achieve nothing, only when everything is in place does the door open.
The difficulty in philosophy is to say no more than we know.
It is one of the chief skills of the philosopher not to occupy himself with questions which do not concern him.
Philosophy just puts everything before us, and neither explains nor deduces anything.-Since everything lies open to view there is nothing to explain
What is your aim in philosophy? To show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle.
Philosophy aims at the logical clarification of thoughts. Philosophy is not a body of doctrine but an activity. A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations. Philosophy does not result in 'philosophical propositions', but rather in the clarification of propositions. Without philosophy thoughts are, as it were, cloudy and indistinct: its task is to make them clear and to give them sharp boundaries.
All philosophy is a 'critique of language' (though not in Mauthner's sense). It was Russell who performed the service of showing that the apparent logical form of a proposition need not be its real one.
I'm doing philosophy like an old woman, first I'm looking for my pencil, then I'm looking for my glasses, then I'm looking for my pencil again.
For an answer which cannot be expressed the question too cannot be expressed. The riddle does not exist. If a question can be put at all, then it can also be answered.
Sometimes, in doing philosophy, one just wants to utter an inarticulate sound.
I think I summed up my attitude to philosophy when I said: philosophy ought really to be written only as a poetic composition.
The real discovery is the one which enables me to stop doing philosophy when I want to. The one that gives philosophy peace, so that it is no longer tormented by questions which bring itself into question.
Philosophy hasn't made any progress? - If somebody scratches the spot where he has an itch, do we have to see some progress? Isn't genuine scratching otherwise, or genuine itching itching? And can't this reaction to an irritation continue in the same way for a long time before a cure for the itching is discovered?
There is a truth in Schopenhauer’s view that philosophy is an organism, and that a book on philosophy, with a beginning and end, is a sort of contradiction. ... 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.
When one is frightened of the truth then it is never the whole truth that one has an inkling of.
Philosophical problems can be compared to locks on safes, which can be opened by dialing a certain word or number, so that no force can open the door until just this word has been hit upon, and once it is hit upon any child can open it.
Philosophy limits the thinkable and therefore the unthinkable.
Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.
Philosophy, as we use the word, is a fight against the fascination which forms of expression exert upon us.
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