If we are to preserve culture we must continue to create it.

History is the interpretation of the significance that the past has for us.

A crude mind could easily think: something is valid, therefore it is true.

Do you know anything that in all its innocence is more humiliating than the funny pages of a Sunday newspaper in America?

People accept a representation in which the elements of wish and fantasy are purposely included but which nevertheless proclaims to represent "the past" and to serve as a guide-rule for life, thereby hopelessly confusing the spheres of knowledge and will.

A superstition which pretends to be scientific creates a much greater confusion of thought than one which contents itself with simple popular practices.

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.