Q0488

Ludwig Wittgenstein

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

The most ordinary things escape notice precisely because they are ordinary.
Thinker Ludwig Wittgenstein
School Analytic Philosophy
Source Philosophical Investigations §129
Theme Philosophy
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with Philosophical Investigations §129, within the tradition of Analytic Philosophy. The wording below is a verified rendering prepared for careful reading rather than a claim of unique translation authority.

A short reading

Read in the register of philosophy, the sentence asks the reader to test an assumption rather than to collect a slogan. In Ludwig Wittgenstein's wider work, similar claims are usually offered as prompts for judgment: what would have to be true for the sentence to hold, and what would follow if it did?

How to cite this quotation

APA: Ludwig Wittgenstein. (n.d.). The most ordinary things escape notice precisely because they are ordinary. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0488

MLA: Ludwig Wittgenstein. “The most ordinary things escape notice precisely because….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0488.

Chicago: Ludwig Wittgenstein. “The most ordinary things escape notice precisely because….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0488.

Same thinker

More from Ludwig Wittgenstein

  1. Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
  2. My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as nonsensical…He must surmount these propositions; then he sees the world rightly.
  3. What we do is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use.
  4. The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.
  5. We feel that even if all possible scientific questions are answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all.

All quotations by Ludwig Wittgenstein

Same theme

More on philosophy

  1. It is through wonder that people both now begin and first began to philosophize.
  2. A person's character is their destiny.
  3. What is opposed brings together; from what differs comes the finest harmony.
  4. Death is nothing to us: for what has been dissolved has no sensation, and what has no sensation is nothing to us.
  5. Pleasure is the beginning and end of the happy life — not the pleasures of profligates, but freedom from pain in the body and from disturbance in the soul.

Browse the philosophy theme