Finite and Infinite Games Quotes

“Let us say that where the finite player plays to be powerful the infinite player plays with strength. A powerful person is one who brings the past to an outcome, settling all its unresolved issues. A strong person is one who carries the past into the future, showing that none of its issues is capable of resolution.”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games

“To be playful is not to be trivial or frivolous, or to act as though nothing of consequence will happen. On the contrary, when we are playful with each other we relate as free persons, and the relationship is open to surprise; everything that happens is of consequence. It is, in fact, seriousness that closes itself to consequence, for seriousness is a dread of the unpredictable outcome of open possibility. To be serious is to press for a specified conclusion. To be playful is to allow for possibility whatever the cost to oneself.”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games: James Carse

“To be prepared against surprise is to be trained. To be prepared for surprise is to be educated. Education discovers an increasing richness in the past, because it sees what is unfinished there. Training regards the past as finished and the future as to be finished. Education leads toward a continuing self-discovery; training leads toward a final self-definition. Training repeats a completed past in the future. Education continues an unfinished past into the future.”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games

“The issue here is not whether self-veiling can be avoided, or even should be avoided. Indeed, no finite play is possible without it. The issue is whether we are ever willing to drop the veil and openly acknowledge, if only to ourselves, that we have freely chosen to face the world through a mask.”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games

“Although it may be evident enough in theory that whoever plays a finite game plays freely, it is often the case that finite players will be unaware of this absolute freedom and will come to think that whatever they do they must do.”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games

“What Copernicus dispelled, however, were not myths but other explanations.”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games

“It is not a matter of exposing one’s unchanging identity, the true self that has always been, but a way of exposing one’s ceaseless growth, the dynamic self that has yet to be.”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games

“Gardeners slaughter no animals. They kill nothing. Fruits, seeds, vegetables, nuts, grains, grasses, roots, flowers, herbs, berries-all are collected when they have ripened, and when their collection is in the interest of the garden's heightened and continued vitality. Harvesting respects a source, leaves it unexploited, suffers it to be as it is.”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility

“While a machine greatly aids the operator in such tasks, it also disciplines its operator. As the machine might be considered the extended arms and legs of the worker, the worker might be considered an extension of the machine. All machines, and especially very complicated machines, require operators to place themselves in a provided location and to perform functions mechanically adapted to the functions of the machine. To use the machine for control is to be controlled by the machine.”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility

“Infinite speakers do not give voice to another, but receive it from another. Infinite speakers do not therefore appeal to a world as audience, do not speak before a world, but present themselves as an audience by way of talking with others. Finite speech informs another about the world-for the sake of being heard. Infinite speech forms a world about the other-for the sake of listening.”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility

“In the complex plotting of sexual encounter it is by no means uncommon for the partners to have played a double game in which each is winner and loser, and each is an emblem for the other's seductive power.”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility

“The danger of the poets, for Plaot, is that they can imitate so well that it is difficult to see what is true and what is merely invented. Since reality cannot be invented, but only discovered through the exercise of reason-according to Plato-all poets must be put into the service of reason. The poets are to surround the citizens of the Republic with such art as will "lead them unawares from childhood to love of, resemblance to, and harmony with, the beauty of reason."

The use of the word "unawares" shows Plato's intention to keep the metaphysical veil intact. Those who are being led to reason cannot be aware of it. They must be led to it without choosing it. Plato asks his poets not to create, but to deceive.

True poets lead no one unawares. It is nothing other than awareness that poets-that is, creators of all sorts-seek. They do not display their art so as to make it appear real; they display the real in a way that reveals it to be art.”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility

“Ideology is the amplification of myth. It is the assumption that since the beginning and end of history are known there is nothing more to say. History is therefore to be obediently lived out according to the ideology.”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility

“This is why patriotism—that is, the desire to protect the power in a society by way of increasing the power of a society—is inherently belligerent. Since there can be no prizes without a society, no society without opponents, patriots must create enemies before we can require protection from them. Patriots can flourish only where boundaries are well-defined, hostile, and dangerous. The spirit of patriotism is therefore characteristically associated with the military or other modes of international conflict. Because patriotism is the desire to contain all other finite games within itself—that is, to embrace all horizons within a single boundary—it is inherently evil.”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games

“The more we are recognized as winners, the more we know ourselves to be losers. That is why it is rare for the winners of highly coveted and publicized prizes to settle for their titles and retire. Winners, especially celebrated winners, must prove repeatedly they are winners. The script must be played over and over again. Titles must be defended by new contests. No one is ever wealthy enough, honored enough, applauded enough. On the contrary, the visibility of our victories only tightens the grip of the failures in our invisible past.”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games

“the only purpose of the game is to prevent it from coming to an end, to keep everyone in play.”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games

“To be prepared against surprise is to be trained. To be prepared for surprise is to be educated.”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games

“This means that a peculiar burden falls on property owners. Since the laws protecting their property will be effective only when they are able to persuade others to obey those laws, they must introduce a theatricality into their ownership sufficiently engaging that their opponents will live by its script.”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games

“Whoever is unable to show a correspondence between wealth and the risks undergone to acquire it, or the talents spent in its acquisition, will soon face a challenge over entitlement. The rich are regularly subject to theft, to taxation, to the expectation that their wealth be shared, as though what they have is not true compensation and therefore not completely theirs.”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games

“Evil is the termination of infinite play. It is infinite play coming to an end in unheard silence.”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games

“Titles are given at the end of play, names at the beginning.”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games

“The joyfulness of infinite play, its laughter, lies in learning to start something we cannot finish.”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games

“Infinite players die. Since the boundaries of death are always part of the play, the infinite player does not die at the end of play, but in the course of play.”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games

“Every move an infinite player makes is toward the horizon.”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games

“Surprise in infinite play is the triumph of the future over the past. Since infinite players do not regard the past as having an outcome, they have no way of knowing what has been begun there. With each surprise, the past reveals a new beginning in itself. Inasmuch as the future is always surprising, the past is always changing.”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games

“Just as the warmakers of Europe regularly melted down the bells to recast them into cannon, the metaphysicians have found the meaning of their myths and announced those meanings without their narrative resonance.”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games

“Julius Caesar originally sought power in Rome because he loved to play the very dangerous style of politics common to the Republic; but he played the game so well that he destroyed all his opponents, making it impossible for him to find genuinely dangerous combat. He was unable to do the very thing for which he sought power. His word was no irresistible, and for that reason he could speak with no one, an his isolation was complete. "We might almost say this man was looking for an assasination" (Syme).”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility

“Our first response to hearing a story is the desire to tell it ourselves-the greater the story the greater the desire. We will go to considerable time and inconvenience to arrange a situation for its retelling. It is as though the story is itself seeking the occasion for its recurrence, making use of us as its agents. We do not go out searching for stories for ourselves; it is rather the stories that have found us for themselves.”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility

“Humans don't just entertain ideas but steep them with emotion. They stand in awe of deities, their parts and possessions, and the supernatural realms they control. They are terrified by disease, death, and infirmity. They are revolted by bodily secretions. They take a prurient interest in sexuality in all its variations. They loathe enemies, traitors, and subordinate peoples. As unpleasant as these thoughts are, people willingly inflict them on one another, sometimes to intimidate or denigrate them, sometimes to get their attention, sometimes to show that they can willingly endure the thoughts. As humans make it through the day, they react emotionally to its ups and downs, especially its frustrations and setbacks, and sometimes advertise these reactions to others.”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility

“A culture can be no stronger than its strongest myths.”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility