91 Quotes by Johan Huizinga

  • Author Johan Huizinga
  • Quote

    For many years the conviction has grown upon me that civilization arises and unfolds in and as play.

  • Share


  • Author Johan Huizinga
  • Quote

    In play there is something “at play” which transcends the immediate needs of life and imparts meaning to the action. All play means something. If we call the active principle that makes up the essence of play, “instinct”, we explain nothing; if we call it “mind” or “will” we say too much. However we may regard it, the very fact that play has a meaning implies a non-materialistic quality in the nature of the thing itself.

  • Share

  • Author Johan Huizinga
  • Quote

    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?

  • Share

  • Author Johan Huizinga
  • Quote

    There is no more striking symptom of the decline of the play-factor than the disappearance of everything imaginative, fanciful, fantastic from men’s dress after the French Revolution. Long.

  • Share

  • Author Johan Huizinga
  • Quote

    Life must be lived as play, playing certain games, making sacrifices, singing and dancing, and then a man will be able to propitiate the gods, and defend himself against his enemies, and win in the contest”. Thus.

  • Share


  • Author Johan Huizinga
  • Quote

    The outlaw, the revolutionary, the cabbalist or member of a secret society, indeed heretics of all kinds are of a highly associative if not sociable disposition, and a certain element of play is prominent in all their doings.

  • Share

  • Author Johan Huizinga
  • Quote

    People accept a representation in which the elements of wish and fantasy are purposely included but which nevertheless proclaims to represent “the past” and to serve as a guide-rule for life, thereby hopelessly confusing the spheres of knowledge and will.

  • Share