26 décembre, Ludwig Wittgenstein

« My propositions serve as elucidation in the following way : anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used them – as steps – to climb up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.) »

« When one is frightened of the truth then it is never the whole truth that one has an inkling of. »

« I can well imagine a religion in which there are no doctrines, in which consequently no words are ever spoken. »

« Man has to awaken to wonder – and so perhaps do peoples. Science is a way of sending him to sleep again. »

« I want to regard man here as an animal ; as a primitive being to which one grants instinct but not ratiocination. (…) Language did not emerge from some kind of ratiocination. »

« I have been trying in all this to remove the temptation to think that there must be what is called a mental process of thinking, hoping, wishing, believing, etc., independent of the process of expressing a thought, a hope, a wish, etc. »

« 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 ? »

« Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination. »

« 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 sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is, and everything happens as it does happen : in it no value exists – and if it did exist, it would have no value. »

« Language is a part of our organism and no less complicated than it. »

« It seems to me that, in every culture, I come across a chapter headed « Wisdom ». And than I know exactly what is going to follow : « Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. »