Johan Huizinga Quotes

I arrived from Harvard, where I had studied philosophy and the history of ideas, with a bias toward literature and formal thought.

In most organizations, change comes in only two flavors: trivial and traumatic. Review the history of the average organization and you'll discover long periods of incremental fiddling punctuated by occasional bouts of frantic, crisis-driven change.

As a universal history of philosophy, the history of philosophy must become one great unity.

A study of the history of opinion is a necessary preliminary to the emancipation of the mind.

It is ironic that the United States should have been founded by intellectuals, for throughout most of our political history, the intellectual has been for the most part either an outsider, a servant or a scapegoat.

The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.

The history of philosophy is not, like the history of the sciences, to be studied with the intellect alone. That which is receptive in us and that which impinges upon us from history is the reality of man's being, unfolding itself in thought.

The great philosophers and the great works are standards for the selection of what is essential. Everything that we do in studying the history of philosophy ultimately serves their better understanding.

I learned much more about acting from philosophy courses, psychology courses, history and anthropology than I ever learned in acting class.

The 1960s was a heroic age in the history of the art of communication - the audacious movers and shakers of those times bear no resemblance to the cast of characters in 'Mad Men.'

Besides numerous science courses, I had the opportunity to study philosophy, the history of architecture, economics, and Russian history in courses taught by extraordinarily knowledgeable professors.

Of course, nobody would deny the importance of human beings for theological thinking, but the time span of history that theologians think about is a few thousand years of human culture rather than the fifteen billion years of the history of the universe.

We've got to dumb America up again.

Kids automatically teach each other how to use technology, but they're not going to teach each other about the history of democracy, or the importance of taking their voices into the public sphere to create social change.

The time has passed in the history of the world when anything is too sacred to be touched, when anything is beyond the reach of the inquiring and scientific spear.

In many ways, a degree in the history of ideas is the ideal training for an aspiring writer.

Human history in essence is the history of ideas.

Random forays into the history of political language with undue regard for the detail of historical context all too often end up as exercises in self confirmation.

I find humanism to be the most rational and positive philosophy for life. And it's not a new thing at all - the history of humanist thought is deep and inspiring.

We live in what may be the most anti-intellectual period in the history of Western civilization.

We know that the war against intelligence is always waged in the name of common sense.

One thing I don't want around me is a military intellectual. I don't have to worry about you on that score.

We've got to turn this backward thinking around where ignorance is championed over intelligence. Young black kids being ridiculed by their peers for getting A's and speaking proper English: that's criminal.

Anti-intellectualism ... has been present in some form and degree in most societies; in one it takes the form of the administering of hemlock, in another of town-and-gown riots, in another of censorship and regimentation, in still another of Congressional investigations.

It is not a sin to introduce a personal bias that can be recognized and discounted. The sin in historical composition is the organization of the story in such a way that bias cannot be recognized.