91 Quotes by Johan Huizinga

  • Author Johan Huizinga
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    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.

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  • Author Johan Huizinga
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    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.

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  • Author Johan Huizinga
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    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.

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  • Author Johan Huizinga
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    The Japanese samurai held the view that what was serious for the common man was but a game for the valiant. Noble.

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  • Author Johan Huizinga
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    The whole functioning of the mediaeval University was profoundly agonistic and ludic. The everlasting disputations which took the place of our learned discussions in periodicals, etc., the solemn ceremonial which is still such a marked feature of University life, the grouping of scholars into nationes, the divisions and subdivisions, the schisms, the unbridgeable gulfs – all these are phenomena belonging to the sphere of competition and play-rules. Erasmus.

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  • Author Johan Huizinga
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    The word “school” has a curious history behind it. Meaning originally “leisure” it has now acquired precisely the opposite sense of systematic work and training, as civilization restricted the free disposal of the young man’s time more and more and herded larger and larger classes of the young to a daily life of severe application from childhood onwards.

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  • Author Johan Huizinga
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    Life is made too easy. Mankind’s moral fibre is giving way under the softening influence of luxury.

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  • Author Johan Huizinga
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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.

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