Top 10 Quotes & Sayings by James P. Carse

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American historian James P. Carse.

Last updated on September 17, 2024.

James P. Carse was an American academic who was Professor Emeritus of history and literature of religion at New York University. His book Finite and Infinite Games was widely influential. He was religious "in the sense that I am endlessly fascinated with the unknowability of what it means to be human, to exist at all."

American - Historian

Source: Wikipedia

The Bible... provides no guide to reading the Bible. In fact, it is full of such inconsistencies, contradictions, lacunae, obscurities, baffling tales, and poetic imagery that to quote it at all is to select from conflicting alternative passages. Every quotation is therefore necessarily an interpretation.

James P. Carse

The finite play for life is serious; the infinite play of life is joyous.

James P. Carse

Belief systems thrive in circumstances of collision. They are energized by their opposites.

James P. Carse

True parents do not see to it that their children grow in a particular way, according to a preferred pattern or scripted stages, but they see to it that they grow with their children.

James P. Carse

In an encounter with divine reality, we do not hear a voice but acquire a voice, and the voice we acquire is our own.

James P. Carse

There are at least two kinds of games. One could be called finite, the other, infinite. A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.

James P. Carse

What I have experienced, and experienced repeatedly, is the silence of God. For many years, this was a distressing matter for me. I did not consider it an experience, but the absence of an experience.

James P. Carse

Strength is paradoxical. 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.

James P. Carse

To be prepared against surprise is to be trained. To be prepared for surprise is to be educated.

James P. Carse

A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.

James P. Carse