Quotes by Johan Huizinga

“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 seriousness. It lies beyond seriousness, on that more primitive and origina...”

“The eternal gulf between being and idea can only be bridged by the rainbow of imagination.”

“An abundance of pictorial fancy, after all, furnished the simple mind quite as much matter for deviating from pure doctrine as any personal interpretation of Holy Scripture.”

“Every age yearns for a more beautiful world. The deeper the desperation and the depression about the confusing present, the more intense that yearning.”

“History is the interpretation of the significance that the past has for us.”

“History can predict nothing except that great changes in human relationships will never come about in the form in which they have been anticipated.”

“Play is a uniquely adaptive act, not subordinate to some other adaptive act, but with a special function of its own in human experience.”

“For us the chief point of interest is the place where the game is played. Generatly it is a simple circle, dyutamandalam, drawn on the ground. The circle as such, however, has a magic significance....”

“Our point of departure must be the conception of an almost childlike play-sense expressing itself in various play-forms, some serious, some playful, but all rooted in ritual and productive of cultu...”

“An aristocratic culture does not advertise its emotions. In its forms of expression it is sober and reserved. Its general attitude is stoic.”

“The awareness of the all-surpassing importance of social groups is now general property in America.”

“Educators are aware that they can reach the youth only by making use of gang spirit and guiding it, not by working against it.”

“Revolution as an ideal concept always preserves the essential content of the original thought: sudden and lasting betterment.”

“These are strange times. Reason, which once combatted faith and seemed to have conquered it, now has to look to faith to save it from dissolution.”

“The practices that led to the formation of the spontaneous order have much in common with rules observed in playing a game. To attempt to trace the origin of competition in play would lead us too f...”