Almost in the same way as earlier physicists are said to have found suddenly that they had too little mathematical understanding to be able to master physics; we may say that young people today are suddenly in the position that ordinary common sense no longer suffices to meet the strange demands life makes. Everything has become so intricate that for its mastery an exceptional degree of understanding is required. For it is not enough any longer to be able to play the game well; but the question is again and again: what sort of game is to be played now anyway?

'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.

Proof, one might say, does not merely shew that it is like this, but: how it is like this. It shows how 13+14 yield 27.

If people did not sometimes do silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done.

A wheel that can be turned though nothing else moves with it, is not a part of the mechanism.

Nothing is more important for teaching us to understand the concepts we have than to construct fictitious ones.

The object of philosophy is the logical clarification of thought.