Ludwig Wittgenstein on Knowledge

"Nothing is more important than the formation of fictional concepts, which teach us at last to understand our own."

"I am showing my pupils details of an immense landscape which they cannot possibly know their way around."

"I never believed in God before." — that I understand. But not: "I never really believed in Him before."

"One age misunderstands another; and a petty age misunderstands all the others in its own ugly way."

"The less somebody knows and understand himself the less great he is, however great may be his talent. For this reason our scientists are not great."

"Someone who knows too much finds it hard not to lie."

"My 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."

"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."

"1. If you do know that here is one hand, we'll grant you all the rest."

"But if you say: "How am I to know what he means, when I see nothing but the signs he gives?" then I say: "How is he to know what he means, when he has nothing but the signs either?"

"378. Knowledge is in the end based on acknowledgement."

"If a lion could talk, we could not understand him."

"What makes a subject difficult to understand — if it is significant, important — is not that some special instruction about abstruse things is necessary to understand it. Rather it is the contrast between the understanding of the subject and what most people want to see. Because of this the very things that are most obvious can become the most difficult to understand. What has to be overcome is not difficulty of the intellect but of the will."