Johan Huizinga quotes

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)
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. View quote
Johan Huizinga
Revolution as an ideal concept always preserves the essential content of the original thought: sudden and lasting betterment. View quote
Johan Huizinga
Educators are aware that they can reach the youth only by making use of gang spirit and guiding it, not by working against it. View quote
Johan Huizinga
The awareness of the all-surpassing importance of social groups is now general property in America. View quote
Johan Huizinga
Play is a uniquely adaptive act, not subordinate to some other adaptive act, but with a special function of its own in human experience. View quote
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. View quote
Johan Huizinga
Culture must have its ultimate aim in the metaphysical or it will cease to be culture. View quote
Johan Huizinga
The second fundamental feature of culture is that all culture has an element of striving. View quote
Johan Huizinga
If we are to preserve culture we must continue to create it. View quote
Johan Huizinga
History is the interpretation of the significance that the past has for us. (Johan Huizinga)
You only live a short time... and you are dead a long time. View quote
Johan Huizinga
Culture means control over nature. View quote
Johan Huizinga
It is impossible to strive for the heroic life. The title of hero is bestowed by the survivors upon the fallen, who themselves know nothing of heroism. View quote
Johan Huizinga
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. View quote
Johan Huizinga
In Europe art has to a large degree taken the place of religion. In America it seems rather to be science. View quote
Johan Huizinga
The repudiation of the primacy of understanding means the repudiation of the norms of judgment as well, and hence the abandonment of all ethical standards. View quote
Johan Huizinga
A superstition which pretends to be scientific creates a much greater confusion of thought than one which contents itself with simple popular practices. View quote
Johan Huizinga
It is the goal of the American university to be the brains of the republic. View quote
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. View quote
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)
The susceptibility of the average modern to pictorial suggestion enables advertising to exploit his lessened power of judgment. View quote
Johan Huizinga
Systematic philosophical and practical anti-intellectualism such as we are witnessing appears to be something truly novel in the history of human culture. View quote
Johan Huizinga
Do you know anything that in all its innocence is more humiliating than the funny pages of a Sunday newspaper in America? View quote
Johan Huizinga
Life is made too easy. Mankind's moral fibre is giving way under the softening influence of luxury. View quote
Johan Huizinga