If we spoke a different language, we would perceive a somewhat different world.
Ludwig WittgensteinRead
Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Self-deception is the hardest form of deception to avoid.
This quote by Ludwig Wittgenstein highlights the profound challenge of being fully honest with oneself. It suggests that the most intricate forms of deceit do not come from others, but from within—thus, confronting one’s own biases and self-deceptions is a difficult yet essential part of personal growth and understanding.
Themes
Self-DeceptionHonestyTruthIntrospectionPersonal Growth
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about personal integrity.
More from Ludwig Wittgenstein
All quotes →One cannot guess how a word functions. One has to look at its use and learn from that. But the difficulty is to remove the prejudice which stands in the way of doing this. It is not a stupid prejudice.
Ludwig WittgensteinRead
No one likes having offended another person; hence everyone feels so much better if the other person doesn't show he's been offended. Nobody likes being confronted by a wounded spaniel. Remember that. It is much easier patiently - and tolerantly - to avoid the person you have injured than to approach him as a friend. You need courage for that.
Ludwig WittgensteinRead
It's impossible for me to say one word about all that music has meant to me in my life. How, then, can I hope to be understood?
Ludwig WittgensteinRead
My day passes between logic, whistling, going for walks, and being depressed. I wish to God that I were more intelligent and everything would finally become clear to me - or else that I needn't live much longer.
Ludwig WittgensteinRead
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.
Ludwig WittgensteinRead
Similar quotes
Envy is the central fact of American life.
Gore VidalRead
If a window is broken and left unrepaired, people walking by will conclude that no one cares and no one is in charge. Soon, more windows will be broken, and the sense of anarchy will spread from the building to the street on which it faces, sending a signal that anything goes.
Malcolm GladwellRead
I cannot too often repeat that Democracy is a word the real gist of which still sleeps, quite unawakened, notwithstanding the resonance and the many angry tempests out of which its syllables have come, from pen or tongue. It is a great word, whose history, I suppose, remains unwritten because that history has yet to be enacted.
Walt WhitmanRead
Events can neither be regarded as a series of adventures nor strung on the thread of a preconceived moral. They must obey their own laws.
Leon TrotskyRead
Dharma Bums refusing to subscribe to the general demand that they consume production and therefore have to work for the privilege of consuming, all that cramp they didn't really want anyway such as refrigerators, TV sets, cars, at least new fancy cars, certain hair oils and deodorants and general junk you finally always see a week later in the garbage anyway, all of them imprisoned in a system of work, produce, consume, work, produce, consume.
Jack KerouacRead
Together, they would watch everything that was so carefully planned collapse, and they would smile at the beauty of destruction.
Markus ZusakRead