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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Johan Huizinga
Age: 72 †
Born: 1872
Born: January 1
Died: 1945
Died: January 1
Cultural Historian
Historian
Linguist
Philosopher
Resistance Fighter
University Teacher
J. Huizinga
Huizinga
Function
Special
Experience
Human
Humans
Adaptive
Play
Subordinate
Uniquely
Subordinates

More quotes by Johan Huizinga

Image
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
Image
The new knowledge has not yet settled in culture. It has not yet been integrated in a new cosmic conception.
Johan Huizinga
Image
Without metaphor the handling of general concepts such as culture and civilization becomes impossible, and that of disease and disorder is the obvious one for the case in point. Is not crisis itself a concept we owe to Hippocrates? In the social and cultural domain no metaphor is more apt than the pathological one.
Johan Huizinga
Image
Do you know anything that in all its innocence is more humiliating than the funny pages of a Sunday newspaper in America?
Johan Huizinga
Image
Science, unguided by a higher abstract principle, freely hands over its secrets to a vastly developed and commercially inspired technology, and the latter, even less restrained by a supreme culture saving principle, with the means of science creates all the instruments of power demanded from it by the organization of Might.
Johan Huizinga
Image
A crude mind could easily think: something is valid, therefore it is true.
Johan Huizinga
Image
William James once said: Progress is a terrible thing. It is more than that: it is also a highly ambiguous notion. For who knowsbut that a little further on the way a bridge may not have collapsed or a crevice split the earth?
Johan Huizinga
Image
A superstition which pretends to be scientific creates a much greater confusion of thought than one which contents itself with simple popular practices.
Johan Huizinga
Image
The art of watching has become mere skill at rapid apperception and understanding of continuously changing visual images. The younger generation has acquired this cinematic perception to an amazing degree.
Johan Huizinga
Image
Nelson's famous signal before the Battle of Trafalgar was not: England expects that every man will be a hero. It said: Englandexpects that every man will do his duty. In 1805 that was enough. It should still be.
Johan Huizinga
Image
Life is made too easy. Mankind's moral fibre is giving way under the softening influence of luxury.
Johan Huizinga
Image
Systematic philosophical and practical anti-intellectualism such as we are witnessing appears to be something truly novel in the history of human culture.
Johan Huizinga
Image
Culture arises and unfolds in and as play... culture itself bears the character of play.
Johan Huizinga
Image
All seemingly profound thinking which passes for realism, because it conveniently does away with all troublesome principles, has agreat attraction for the adolescent mind.
Johan Huizinga
Image
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
Image
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 purity of critical judgment.
Johan Huizinga
Image
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.
Johan Huizinga
Image
We are living in a demented world. And we know it. It would not come as a surprise to anyone if tomorrow the madness gave way to afrenzy which would leave our poor Europe in a state of distracted stupor, with engines still turning and flags streaming in the breeze, but with the spirit gone.
Johan Huizinga
Image
The content of the ideal is a desire to return to the perfection of an imaginary past.
Johan Huizinga
Image
You can deny, if you like, nearly all abstractions: justice, beauty, truth, goodness, mind, God. You can deny seriousness, but not play.
Johan Huizinga