When the world was half a thousand years younger all events had much sharper outlines than now. The distance between sadness and joy, between good and bad fortune, seemed to be much greater than for us; every experience had that degree of directness and absoluteness which joy and sadness still have in the mind of a child
Johan HuizingaThe susceptibility of the average modern to pictorial suggestion enables advertising to exploit his lessened power of judgment.
Johan HuizingaFrom 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.
Johan HuizingaPlay is a uniquely adaptive act, not subordinate to some other adaptive act, but with a special function of its own in human experience.
Johan HuizingaThe 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.
Johan Huizinga