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On Certainty (Harper Perennial Modern Thought)

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Top 10 Best Quotes

“I act with complete certainty. But this certainty is my own.”

“At the core of all well-founded belief lies belief that is unfounded.”

“If you tried to doubt everything you would not get as far as doubting anything. The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty.”

“Where two principles really do meet which cannot be reconciled with one another, then each man declares the other a fool and a heretic”

“What stands fast does so, not because it is intrinsically obvious or convincing; it is rather held fast by what lies around it.”

“What is the proof that I know something? Most certainly not my saying I know it.”

“476. Children do not learn that books exist, that armchairs exist, etc.,etc. - they learn to fetch books, sit in armchairs, etc.,etc. Later, questions about the existence of things do of course arise, "Is there such a thing as a unicorn?" and so on. But such a question is possible only because as a rule no corresponding question presents itself. For how does one know how to set about satisfying oneself of the existence of unicorns? How did one learn the method for determining whether something exists or not? 477. "So one must know that the objects whose names one teaches a child by an ostensive definition exist." - Why must one know they do? Isn't it enough that experience doesn't later show the opposite? For why should the language-game rest on some kind of knowledge? 478. Does a child believe that milk exists? Or does it know that milk exists? Does a cat know that a mouse exists? 479. Are we to say that the knowledge that there are physical objects comes very early or very late?”

“I want to say: We use judgements as principlesof judegement.”

“Certainty is as it were a tone of voice in which one declares how things are, but one does not infer from the tone of voice that one is justified.”

“But doesn't it come out here that knowledge is related to a decision?”

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Book Keywords:

existence, epistemology, freedom, speech, fools, thought, doubt, knowledge, individuality, choice, wittgenstein, heretics, growth, doubting, belief, action, ideas, metaphysics, certainty, negotiation

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