All Johan Huizinga Quotes
- Play is a uniquely adaptive act, not subordinate to some other adaptive act, but with a special function of its own in human experience. Act
- If a serious statement is defined as one that may be made in terms of waking life, poetry will never rise to the level of… Animal
- The eternal gulf between being and idea can only be bridged by the rainbow of imagination. Bridged
- A superstition which pretends to be scientific creates a much greater confusion of thought than one which contents itself with simple popular practices. Confusion
- Culture must have its ultimate aim in the metaphysical or it will cease to be culture. Aim
- From whichever angle one looks at it, the application of racial theories remains a striking proof of the lowered demands of public opinion upon the… Angle
- History can predict nothing except that great changes in human relationships will never come about in the form in which they have been anticipated. Anticipated
- If we are to preserve culture we must continue to create it. Continue
- Whether the aim is in heaven or on earth, wisdom or wealth, the essential condition of its pursuit and attainment is always security and order. Aim
- In Europe art has to a large degree taken the place of religion. In America it seems rather to be science. America
- The second fundamental feature of culture is that all culture has an element of striving. All
- Play is older than culture, for culture, however inadequately defined, always presupposes human society, and animals have not waited for man to teach them their… Always Presupposes
- The spirit of playful competition is, as a social impulse, older than culture itself and pervades all life like a veritable ferment. Ritual grew up… All
- A new culture can only grow up in the soil of a purged humanity. Culture
- You can deny, if you like, nearly all abstractions: justice, beauty, truth, goodness, mind, God. You can deny seriousness, but not play. Abstractions
- Revolution as an ideal concept always preserves the essential content of the original thought: sudden and lasting betterment. Always Preserves
- The repudiation of the primacy of understanding means the repudiation of the norms of judgment as well, and hence the abandonment of all ethical standards. Abandonment
- The susceptibility of the average modern to pictorial suggestion enables advertising to exploit his lessened power of judgment. Advertising
- Do you know anything that in all its innocence is more humiliating than the funny pages of a Sunday newspaper in America? All
- The title of hero is bestowed by the survivors upon the fallen, who themselves know nothing of heroism. Bestowed