Finite and Infinite Games Quotes

“infinite players offer their death as a way of continuing the play. For that reason they do not play for their own life; they live for their own play. But since that play is always with others, it is evident that infinite players both live and die for the continuing life of others.”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games

“Immortality is therefore the supreme example of the contradictoriness of finite play: It is a life one cannot live.”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games

“Surprise in finite play is the triumph of the past over the future. The Master Player who already knows what moves are to be made has a decisive advantage over the unprepared player who does not yet know what moves will be made. A finite player is trained not only to anticipate every future possibility, but to control the future, to prevent it from altering the past. This is the finite player in the mode of seriousness with its dread of unpredictable consequence. Infinite players, on the other hand, continue their play in the expectation of being surprised. If surprise is no longer possible, all play ceases. Surprise causes finite play to end; it is the reason for infinite play to continue.”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games

“Fields of play simply do not impose themselves on us. Therefore, all the limitations of finite play are self-limitations.”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games

“Artists cannot be trained. One does not become an artist by acquiring certain skills or techniques, though one can use any number of skills and techniques in artistic activity. The creative is found in anyone who is prepared for surprise. Such a person cannot go to school to be an artist, but can only go to school as an artist. Therefore,”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games

“Power is concerned with what has already happened; strength with what has yet to happen.”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games

“To be serious is to press for a specified conclusion. To be playful is to allow for possibility whatever the cost to oneself. There”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games

“The rules of an infinite game must change in the course of play. The rules are changed when the players of an infinite game agree that the play is imperiled by a finite outcome—that is, by the victory of some players and the defeat of others. The”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games

“There is no finite game unless the players freely choose to play it. No one can play who is forced to play. It is an invariable principle of all play, finite and infinite, that whoever plays, plays freely. Whoever must play, cannot play. 3”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games

“I am not strong because I can force others to do what I wish as a result of my play with them, but because I can allow them to do what they wish in the course of my play with them. 30”
― 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, 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: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility

“Each person whose horizon is affected by the Renaissance affects the horizon of the Renaissance in turn.”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games

“Any attempt to vary from the past in such a way as to cut the past off, causing it to be forgotten, has little cultural importance.”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games

“Life in death concerns those who are titled and whose titles, since they are timeless, may not be extinguished by death. Immortality, in this case, is not a reward but the condition necessary to the possession of rewards. Victors live forever not because their souls are unaffected by death but because their titles must not be forgotten.”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games

“The agreement of the players to the applicable rules constitutes the ultimate validation of those rules.”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games

“Just as infinite play cannot be contained within finite play, culture cannot be authentic if held within the boundaries of a society.”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games

“Some self-veiling is present in all finite games. Players must intentionally forget the inherently voluntary nature of their play, else all competitive effort will desert them.”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games

“The paradox of infinite play is that the players desire to continue the play in others. The paradox is precisely that they play only when others go on with the game. Infinite players play best when they become least necessary to the continuation of play. It is for this reason they play as mortals. The joyfulness of infinite play, its laughter, lies in learning to start something we cannot finish.”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games

“The resonance of myth collapses the apparent distinction between the story told by one person to another and the story of their telling and listening. It is one thing for you to tell me the story of Muhammad; it is quite another for me to tell the story of your telling me about Muhammad. Ordinarily we confine the story to the words of the speaker. But in doing so we treat it as a story quoted, not a story told. In your relating, and not repeating, the story of Muhammad, I am touched, and I respond from my genius. Something has begun. But in touching, you are also touched. Something has begun between us. Our relationship has opened forward dramatically. Since this drama emerged from the telling of the story of Muhammad, our story resonates with Muhammad's, and Muhammad's with ours.”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility

“Myths, told for their own sake, are not stories that have meanings, but stories that give meanings.”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility

“But what resounds most deeply in the life of Copernicus is the journey that made knowledge possible and not the knowledge that made the journey successful.”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility

“The homelessness of nature, its utter indifference to human existence, disclose to the infinite player that nature is the genius of the dramatic.”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility

“We stand before genius in silence. We cannot speak it, we can only speak as it. Yet, though I speak as genius, I cannot speak for genius. I cannot give nature a voice in my script. I can not give others a voice in my script-without denying their own source, their originality. To do so is to cease responding to the other, to cease being responsible. No one and nothing belong in my script.”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility

“For the infinite player, seeing as genius, nature is the absolutely unlike. The infinite player recognizes nothing on the face of nature. Nature displays not only its indifference to human existence but its difference as well.”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility

“We understand nature as source when we understand ourselves as source. We abandon all attempts at an explanation of nature when we see that we cannot be explained, when our own self-origination cannot be stated as fact. We behold the irreducible otherness of nature when we behold ourselves as its other.”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility

“We see nature as genius when we see as genius.”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility

“When society is unveiled, when we see that it is whatever we want it to be, that it is a species of culture with nothing necessary in it, by no means a phenomenon of nature or a manifestation of instinct, nature is no longer shaped and fitted into one or another set of societal goals. Unveiled, we stand before a nature whose only face is its hidden self-origination: its genius.”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility

“Strictly speaking, waste persons do not exist outside the boundaries of a society. They are not society's enemies. One does not go to war against them, as one goes to war against another society. Waste persons do not constitute an alternative or threatening society; they constitute an unveiling culture. They are therefore "purged". A society cleanses itself of them.”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility

“Since the attempt to control nature is at its heart the attempt to control other persons, we can expect societies to be less patient with those cultures which express some degree of indifference to societal goals and values. It is this repeated parallel that brings us to see that the society that creates natural waste creates human waste.”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility

“Being undivided, nature cannot be used against itself. We do not therefore consume it, or exhaust it. We simply rearrange our societal patterns in a way that reduces our ability to respond creatively to the existing patterns of spontaneity. That is, to use the societal expression, we create waste. Waste, of course, is by no means unnatural. The trash and garbage of a civilization do not befoul nature; they are nature-but in a form society no longer is able to exploit for its own ends.”
― James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility