Johan Huizinga (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈjoːɦɑn ˈɦœy̯zɪŋɣaː]; 7 December 1872 – 1 February 1945) was a Dutch historian and one of the founders of modern cultural history.
A superstition which pretends to be scientific creates a much greater confusion of thought than one which contents itself with simple popular practices.
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.
In Europe art has to a large degree taken the place of religion. In America it seems rather to be science.
A crude mind could easily think: something is valid, therefore it is true.
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.
Do you know anything that in all its innocence is more humiliating than the funny pages of a Sunday newspaper in America?
The content of the ideal is a desire to return to the perfection of an imaginary past.
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.
Systematic philosophical and practical anti-intellectualism such as we are witnessing appears to be something truly novel in the history of human culture.
Culture arises and unfolds in and as play. . . culture itself bears the character of play.
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.
Life is made too easy. Mankind's moral fibre is giving way under the softening influence of luxury.
A new culture can only grow up in the soil of a purged humanity.
An aristocratic culture does not advertise its emotions. In its forms of expression it is sober and reserved. Its general attitude is stoic.
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.
If the Americans, in addition to the eagle and the Stars and Stripes and the more unofficial symbols of bison, moose and Indian, should ever need another emblem, one which is friendly and pleasant, then I think they should choose the grapefruit. Or rather the half grapefruit, for this fruit only comes in halves, I believe. Practically speaking, it is always yellow, always just as fresh and well served. And it always comes at the same, still hopeful hour of the morning.
The title of hero is bestowed by the survivors upon the fallen, who themselves know nothing of heroism.
Every work of history constructs contexts and designs, forms in which past reality can be comprehended. History creates comprehensibility primarily by arranging facts meaningfully and only in a very limited sense by establishing strict causal connections.
Most thoughtful Americans of today seem to have forgotten how strongly their own and immediate predecessors, Emerson, Hawthorne and Whitman, were still preoccupied with the essence behind things.
If a serious statement is defined as one that may be made in terms of waking life, poetry will never rise to the level of seriousness. It lies beyond seriousness, on that more primitive and original level where the child, the animal, the savage, and the seer belong, in the region of dream, enchantment, ecstasy, laughter. To understand poetry we must be capable of donning the child's soul like a magic cloak and of forsaking man's wisdom for the child's.