Quotes from James P. Carse

Finite players need the world to provide an absolute reference for understanding themselves; simultaneously, the world needs the theater of finite play to remain a world.

a finite game is to be won by someone it must come to a definitive end. It will come to an end when someone has won. We know that someone has won the game when all the players have agreed who among them is the winner. No other condition than the agreement of the players is absolutely required in determining who has won the game.

religion ceases to be religion when its poetic authority is recast as civic authority.

George Eliot's villainous character, Grandcourt, "did not care a languid curse for anyone's admiration; but this state of non-caring, just as much as desire, required its related object-namely, a world of admiring and envying spectators: for if you are fond of looking stonily at smiling persons, the persons must be there and they must smile

What one wins in a finite game is a title. A title is the acknowledgment of others that one has been the winner of a particular game. Titles are public. They are for others to notice. I expect others to address me according to my titles, but I do not address myself with them—unless, of course, I address myself as an other. The effectiveness of a title depends on its visibility, its noticeability to others.

Just as it is essential for a finite game to have a definitive ending, it must also have a precise beginning. Therefore, we can speak of finite games as having temporal boundaries—to which, of course, all players must agree. But players must agree to the establishment of spatial and numerical boundaries as well. That is, the game must be played within a marked area, and with specified players.

The paradox of genius exposes us directly to the dynamic of open reciprocity, for if you are the genius of what you say to me, I am the genius of what I hear you say. What you say originally I can hear only originally. As you surrender the sound on your lips, I surrender the sound in my ear. Each of us has relinquished to the other what has been relinquished to the other.

Gardeners celebrate variety, unlikeness, spontaneity. They understand that an abundance of styles is in the interest of vitality. The more complex the organic content of the soil, for example-that is, the more numerous its sources of change-the more vigorous its liveliness. Growth promotes growth.

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.

We are players in search of a world as often as we are world in search of players, and sometimes we are both at once. Some worlds pass quickly into existence, and quickly out of it. Some sustain themselves for longer periods, but no world lasts forever.

The passage of time is always relative to that which does not pass, to the timeless.

What is your future, and mine, becomes ours. We prepare each other for surprise.

It is by no means an accident that the only successful attempt of the American citizenry to force the ending of a foreign war occurred simultaneously with a wide revision in sexual attitudes. The civilization quickly recovered from this threat, however, by tempting these revolutionaries into a new sexual politics, one of societal standoff, where sexual genius is confused with such struggles as the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment and the election of women to national office.

So also in culture. Infinite players understand that the vigor of a culture has to do with the variety of its sources, the differences within itself. The unique and the surprising are not suppressed in some persons for the strength of others. The genius in you stimulates the genius in me.

What is preserved by the constancy of numerical boundaries, of course, is the possibility that all contestants can agree on an eventual winner.

Explanation sets the need for further inquiry aside; narrative invites us to rethink what we thought we knew.

There are variations in the quality of deviation; not all divergence from the past is culturally significant. 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. Greater significance attaches to those variations that bring the tradition into view in a new way, allowing the familiar to be seen as unfamiliar, as requiring a new appraisal of all that we have been—and therefore of all that we are.

To have such boundaries means that the date, place, and membership of each finite game are externally defined.

Just as infinite play cannot be contained within finite play, culture cannot be authentic if held within the boundaries of a society.

In one respect, but only one, an infinite game is identical to a finite game: Of infinite players we can also say that if they play they play freely; if they must play, they cannot play. Otherwise, infinite and finite play stand in the sharpest possible contrast.

Infinite players cannot say when their game began, nor do they care.

Indeed, the only purpose of the game is to prevent it from coming to an end, to keep everyone in play.

The points of reference for all finite history are signal triumphs meant never to be forgotten: establishment of the throne of David, the birth of the Savior, the journey to Medina, the battle of Hastings, the American, French, Russian, Chinese, and Cuban revolutions.

To operate a machine one must operate like a machine. Using a machine to do what we cannot do, we find we must do what the machine does.