Johan Huizinga Quotes about History

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

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

Past, History, Interpretation

If, then, this civilization is to be saved, if it is not to be submerged by centuries of barbarism, but to secure the treasures ofits inheritance on new and more stable foundations, there is indeed need for those now living fully to realize how far the decay has already progressed.

Johan Huizinga

War, Civilization, History

What the study of history and artistic creation have in common is a mode of forming images.

Johan Huizinga

Art, History, Common

Johan Huizinga (1968). “Dutch civilisation in the seventeenth century, and other essays”

Quite apart from any conscious program, the great cultural historians have always been historical morphologists: seekers after theforms of life, thought, custom, knowledge, art.

Johan Huizinga

Art, History, Historical

We have to transpose ourselves into this impressionability of mind, into this sensitivity to tears and spiritual repentance, intothis susceptibility, before we can judge how colorful and intensive life was then.

Johan Huizinga

Spiritual, History, Judging

History, as the study of the past, makes the coherence of what happened comprehensible by reducing events to a dramatic pattern and seeming them in a simple form.

Johan Huizinga

Past, Simple, History

We are living in a demented world. And we know it. It would not come as a surprise to anyone if tomorrow the madness gave way to afrenzy which would leave our poor Europe in a state of distracted stupor, with engines still turning and flags streaming in the breeze, but with the spirit gone.

Johan Huizinga

War, Europe, History

But one sound always rose above the clamor of busy life and, no matter how much of a tintinnabulation, was never confused and, fora moment lifted everything into an ordered sphere: that of the bells.

Johan Huizinga

Confused, History, Rose

One does not realize the historical sensation as a re-experiencing, but as an understanding that is closely related to the understanding of music, or rather of the world by means of music.

Johan Huizinga

Music, Mean, History

Johan Huizinga (2014). “Men and Ideas: History, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance”, p.54, Princeton University Press