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
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
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
In Europe art has to a large degree taken the place of religion. In America it seems rather to be science.
– Johan Huizinga
History is the interpretation of the significance that the past has for us.
– Johan Huizinga
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
An aristocratic culture does not advertise its emotions. In its forms of expression it is sober and reserved. Its general attitude is stoic.