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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

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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
Duty
Signal
Stills
Nelson
Still
Expects
Enough
Signals
Every
Famous
Men
England
Hero
Battle

More quotes by Johan Huizinga

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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
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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
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The content of the ideal is a desire to return to the perfection of an imaginary past.
Johan Huizinga
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An aristocratic culture does not advertise its emotions. In its forms of expression it is sober and reserved. Its general attitude is stoic.
Johan Huizinga
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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
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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
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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
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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.
Johan Huizinga
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A new culture can only grow up in the soil of a purged humanity.
Johan Huizinga
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Culture must have its ultimate aim in the metaphysical or it will cease to be culture.
Johan Huizinga
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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
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What the study of history and artistic creation have in common is a mode of forming images.
Johan Huizinga
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We have to transpose ourselves into this impressionability of mind, into this sensitivity to tears and spiritual repentance, intothis susceptibility, before we can judge how colorful and intensive life was then.
Johan Huizinga
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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
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Do you know anything that in all its innocence is more humiliating than the funny pages of a Sunday newspaper in America?
Johan Huizinga
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The second fundamental feature of culture is that all culture has an element of striving.
Johan Huizinga
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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
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Revolution as an ideal concept always preserves the essential content of the original thought: sudden and lasting betterment.
Johan Huizinga
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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
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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