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Who really said it

The limits of my language mean the limits of my world

Written by Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889–1951 · Austrian-British philosopher of logic & language
Verified Free to reuse

This is a genuine Wittgenstein line — proposition 5.6 of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. The German (“Die Grenzen meiner Sprache bedeuten die Grenzen meiner Welt”) first appeared in 1921; the exact English wording here is C. K. Ogden’s 1922 translation, confirmed against the full text.

Last verified 16 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world” Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921; trans. C. K. Ogden, 1922), proposition 5.6

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Provenance

The source

Work
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
Proposition
5.6
Original German
Die Grenzen meiner Sprache bedeuten die Grenzen meiner Welt
Translation
C. K. Ogden (1922)

5.6 The limits of my language mean the limits of my world. … 5.62 … that the world is my world, shows itself in the fact that the limits of the language (the language which only I understand) mean the limits of my world.

As rendered in C. K. Ogden’s 1922 English translation of the Tractatus, propositions 5.6 and 5.62.

Read Tractatus proposition 5.6 at Wikisource

How we verified it

  • Confirmed word-for-word against proposition 5.6 in the full text of Ogden’s translation at Wikisource.
  • Listed in the sourced section of Wikiquote under Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922), with the German original given.
  • Attributed to Tractatus 5.6 (1921) by the quotation archive WIST.
Public domain

The German original was published in 1921 and C. K. Ogden’s English translation — the source of this exact wording — appeared in 1922. Both predate 1931, so the text is in the public domain in the United States.

This reflects the original work, which is public domain. If your exact English wording comes from a specific modern translation, that translation may itself still be under copyright — check the edition you quote.

Fact-check

Often misattributed

The attribution to Wittgenstein is correct — but a corrupted version of the line circulates just as widely, and it changes the meaning.

Ludwig Wittgenstein Corrupted wording

A much-shared version reads “The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. All I know is what I have words for.” Wittgenstein wrote “world,” not “mind,” and the second sentence appears nowhere in the Tractatus. Wikiquote records it only as a variant translation of 5.6 (not in its Misattributed or Disputed sections); we flag it as corrupted because the “mind” wording changes the meaning.

Ludwig Wittgenstein Translation variants

Because the line is translated from German, wording varies by edition — you’ll see “mark the limits” or “stand for the limits” alongside “mean.” The German verb is bedeuten; the “mean” wording is Ogden’s 1922 rendering, also used by later translators.

The genuine line is “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world” — Tractatus 5.6, verifiable in Ogden’s translation.

Context

Why it mattered

In the Tractatus, 5.6 is not a slogan about vocabulary size but a claim about logic: for Wittgenstein, the limits of language and the limits of thought about the world are one and the same, because a meaningful proposition is a picture of a possible state of affairs. What you cannot frame in language, you cannot frame as a fact of your world.

The line reads as inspirational on a poster, but its home is a dense, numbered treatise whose final proposition is “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”

“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”

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Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

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Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Tractatus 5.6 (full text, Ogden translation)en.wikisource.org

The complete section 5 of Ogden's 1922 translation, where 5.6 can be read in context.
Ludwig Wittgenstein — sourced quotationsen.wikiquote.org

Lists 5.6 with the German original alongside variant translations, including the loose 'limits of my mind' rendering.
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus — free ebookgutenberg.org

Project Gutenberg's public-domain edition of Ogden's 1922 English translation.
Wittgenstein, Tractatus 5.6 (1921)wist.info

Quotation-archive entry with source citation and translation notes.
Stanford Encyclopedia — Ludwig Wittgensteinplato.stanford.edu

Scholarly overview of Wittgenstein and the Tractatus for the philosophical context of 5.6.

The author

About Ludwig Wittgenstein

Ludwig Wittgenstein

1889–1951 · Austrian-British philosopher of logic & language

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) was an Austrian-born philosopher who did much of his work at Cambridge and is regarded as one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century. His early masterwork, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (German 1921, English 1922), argued that the structure of language mirrors the structure of the world — and that what cannot be said clearly must be passed over in silence. Proposition 5.6 is among its most quoted lines.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. C. K. Ogden (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1922), prop. 5.6. First published in German in Annalen der Naturphilosophie (1921).

MLA (9th ed.)

Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Translated by C. K. Ogden, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1922, prop. 5.6.

APA (7th ed.)

Wittgenstein, L. (1922). Tractatus logico-philosophicus (C. K. Ogden, Trans.). Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. (Original work published 1921)

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Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘The limits of my language mean the limits of my world’?” Last verified 16 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/the-limits-of-my-language-mean-the-limits-of-my-world

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