Philosophical investigations Quotes

“Imagine a person whose memory could not retain what the word 'pain' meant—so that he constantly called different things by that name—but nevertheless used the word in a way fitting in with the usual symptoms and presuppositions of ‘pain’—in short he uses it as we all do. Here I should like to say: a wheel that can be turned though nothing else moves with it, is not part of the mechanism”

“The problems are solved, not by giving new information, but by arranging what we have known since long.”

“A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably.”

“Language is a labyrinth of paths. You approach from one side and know your way about”