Johan Huizinga Quotes

Quotes about:

• 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 in sacred play; poetry was born in play and nourished on play; music and dancing were pure play....We have to conclude, therefore, that civilization is, in its earliest phases, played. It does not come from play...it arises in and as play, and never leaves it.

  Johan Huizinga

  Civilization, Play, Dancing

  47 Copy quote

• 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 playing.

  Johan Huizinga

  Men, Animal, Play

  Johan Huizinga (1949). “Homo Ludens”, p.1, Taylor & Francis

  73 Copy quote

• Culture arises and unfolds in and as play... culture itself bears the character of play.

  Johan Huizinga

  Character, Play, Culture

  43 Copy quote

• Play: It is an an activity which proceeds within certain limits of time and space, in a visible order, according to rules freely accepted, and outside the sphere of necessity or material utility. The play-mood is one of rapture and enthusiasm, and is sacred or festive in accordance with the occasion. A feeling of exaltation and tension accompanies the action.

  Johan Huizinga

  Order, Play, Space

  Johan Huizinga (1949). “Homo Ludens”, p.132, Taylor & Francis

  41 Copy quote

• If we are to preserve culture we must continue to create it.

  Johan Huizinga

  Culture, Preserves, Ifs

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• You can deny, if you like, nearly all abstractions: justice, beauty, truth, goodness, mind, God. You can deny seriousness, but not play.

  Johan Huizinga

  Play, Justice, Mind

  Johan Huizinga (1971). “Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture”, p.9, Beacon Press

  30 Copy quote

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

  Johan Huizinga

  Playing Games, Special, Function

  34 Copy quote

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

  Johan Huizinga

  Past, History, Interpretation

  20 Copy quote

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

  Johan Huizinga

  Depression, Beautiful, Confusing

  30 Copy quote

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

  Johan Huizinga

  Ideas, Imagination, Rainbow

  Johan Huizinga (1949). “Homo Ludens”, Routledge/Thoemms Press

  24 Copy quote

• The things which can make life enjoyable remain the same. They are, now as before, reading, music, fine arts, travel, the enjoyment of nature, sports, fashion, social vanity (knightly orders, honorary offices, gatherings) and the intoxication of the senses.

  Johan Huizinga

  Music, Sports, Fashion

  10 Copy quote

• You only live a short time... and you are dead a long time.

  Johan Huizinga

  Long, Long Time, Short Time

  8 Copy quote

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

  Johan Huizinga

  Use, Spirit, Youth

  Johan Huizinga (1972). “America; a Dutch historian's vision, from afar and near”

  27 Copy quote

• Culture means control over nature.

  Johan Huizinga

  Nature, Mean, Culture

  7 Copy quote

• Culture requires in the first place a certain balance of material and spiritual values.

  Johan Huizinga

  Spiritual, Balance, Culture

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• The modern city hardly knows a pure darkness or true silence anymore, nor does it know the effect of a single small light or that of a lonely distant shout.

  Johan Huizinga

  Lonely, Cities, Light

  21 Copy quote

• The content of the ideal is a desire to return to the perfection of an imaginary past.

  Johan Huizinga

  Past, Perfection, Desire

  Johan Huizinga (2016). “The Waning of the Middle Ages”, p.27, Ravenio Books

  5 Copy quote

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

  Johan Huizinga

  Form, Humans, Great Change

  "In the Shadow of Tomorrow". Book by Johan Huizinga, Ch. 20, 1936.

  18 Copy quote

• If, then, this civilization is to be saved, if it is not to be submerged by centuries of barbarism, but to secure the treasures ofits inheritance on new and more stable foundations, there is indeed need for those now living fully to realize how far the decay has already progressed.

  Johan Huizinga

  War, Civilization, History

  18 Copy quote

• If the Americans, in addition to the eagle and the Stars and Stripes and the more unofficial symbols of bison, moose and Indian, should ever need another emblem, one which is friendly and pleasant, then I think they should choose the grapefruit. Or rather the half grapefruit, for this fruit only comes in halves, I believe. Practically speaking, it is always yellow, always just as fresh and well served. And it always comes at the same, still hopeful hour of the morning.

  Johan Huizinga

  Morning, Stars, Believe

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• Culture must have its ultimate aim in the metaphysical or it will cease to be culture.

  Johan Huizinga

  Culture, Metaphysical, Aim

  18 Copy quote

• It is an evil world. The fires of hatred and violence burn fiercely. Evil is powerful, the devil covers a darkened earth with hisblack wings. And soon the end of the world is expected. But mankind does not repent, the church struggles, and the preachers and poets warn and lament in vain.

  Johan Huizinga

  Powerful, Struggle, Fire

  11 Copy quote

• Today the average inhabitant of the western hemisphere knows a little of everything. He has the newspaper on his breakfast table and wireless within reach. For the evening there is the film, cards, or a meeting to complete a day spent in the office or factory where nothing that is essential has been learnt. With slight variation this picture of a low cultural average holds good over the entire range from factory-hand of clerk to manager or director. Only the personal will to culture, in whatever field and however pursued raises modern man above this level.

  Johan Huizinga

  Men, Average, Hands

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• Life is made too easy. Mankind's moral fibre is giving way under the softening influence of luxury.

  Johan Huizinga

  Luxury, Giving, Way

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• What the study of history and artistic creation have in common is a mode of forming images.

  Johan Huizinga

  Art, History, Common

  Johan Huizinga (1968). “Dutch civilisation in the seventeenth century, and other essays”

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