Question 1

What is the best book to start with?

Accepted Answer

The Tractatus, slowly, through 6.54 and 7, in Pears and McGuinness. Then Investigations §§1–43. You need the ladder before you hear it being thrown away, and you need the builders' language before 'form of life' becomes a cultural slogan.

Question 2

What is the most famous quote?

Accepted Answer

This library does not measure fame, and it does not rank lines by how often they are shared. The first line it files for Ludwig Wittgenstein that is not marked Questionable or Misattributed is “The world is all that is the case.” (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, proposition 1, Paraphrase or translation).

Question 3

What is the most misquoted line?

Accepted Answer

None of the lines this library files for Ludwig Wittgenstein is marked Misattributed or Questionable. That is a fact about these cards, not a certificate that every popular sentence is theirs.

Question 4

What is one key idea, in a sentence?

Accepted Answer

Limit: The Tractatus draws a limit to saying. Ethics shows itself. Proposition 7 is the ending, not a rule of politeness.