A philosopher who is not taking part in discussions is like a boxer who never goes into the ring.

Suppose someone were to say: 'Imagine this butterfly exactly as it is, but ugly instead of beautiful'?!

Our greatest stupidities may be very wise.

Black seems to make a colour cloudy, but darkness doesn't. A ruby could thus keep getting darker without ever becoming cloudy; but if it became blackish red, it would become cloudy.

An honest religious thinker is like a tightrope walker. He almost looks as though he were walking on nothing but air. His support is the slenderest imaginable. And yet it really is possible to walk on it.

My propositions serve as elucidations 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.) He must transcend these propositions, and then he will see the whole world aright.

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