Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (tr. C. K. Ogden, 1922)

Their wordsWhat can be said at all can be said clearly; and whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent.

Their wordsOn the other hand the truth of the thoughts communicated here seems to me unassailable and definitive. I am, therefore, of the opinion that the problems have in essentials been finally solved.

Their wordsThe world is everything that is the case.

Their wordsThe world is the totality of facts, not of things.

Their wordsMost propositions and questions, that have been written about philosophical matters, are not false, but senseless. We cannot, therefore, answer questions of this kind at all, but only state their senselessness. Most questions and propositions of the philosophers result from the fact that we do not understand the logic of our language.

Their wordsThe object of philosophy is the logical clarification of thoughts. Philosophy is not a theory but an activity. A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations.

Their wordsWhat can be shown cannot be said.

Their wordsThe events of the future cannot be inferred from those of the present. Superstition is the belief in the causal nexus.

Their wordsThe limits of my language mean the limits of my world.

Their wordsThat the sun will rise to-morrow, is an hypothesis; and that means that we do not know whether it will rise.

Their wordsAt the basis of the whole modern view of the world lies the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena.

Their wordsThe sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it there is no value—and if there were, it would be of no value.

Their wordsIt is clear that ethics cannot be expressed. Ethics is transcendental. (Ethics and aesthetics are one.)

Their wordsThe world of the happy is quite another than that of the unhappy.

Their wordsDeath is not an event of life. Death is not lived through. If by eternity is understood not endless temporal duration but timelessness, then he lives eternally who lives in the present.

Their wordsHow the world is, is completely indifferent for what is higher. God does not reveal himself in the world.

Their wordsWe feel that even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all. Of course there is then no question left, and just this is the answer.

Their wordsMy propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.)

Their wordsWhereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.