Finite and Infinite Games is a book by religious scholar James P. Carse. Kevin Kelly has praised it for "alter my thinking about life, the universe, and everything."
Famous quotes containing the words finite and, finite, infinite and/or games:
“Put shortly, these are the two views, then. One, that man is intrinsically good, spoilt by circumstance; and the other that he is intrinsically limited, but disciplined by order and tradition to something fairly decent. To the one party man’s nature is like a well, to the other like a bucket. The view which regards him like a well, a reservoir full of possibilities, I call the romantic; the one which regards him as a very finite and fixed creature, I call the classical.”
—Thomas Ernest Hulme (1883–1917)
“God is a being of transcendent and unlimited perfections: his nature therefore is incomprehensible to finite spirits.”
—George Berkeley (1685–1753)
“Since [man] is infinitely removed from comprehending the extremes, the end of things and their beginning are hopelessly hidden from him in an impenetrable secret; he is equally incapable of seeing the nothing from which he was made, and the infinite in which he is swallowed up.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
“At the age of twelve I was finding the world too small: it appeared to me like a dull, trim back garden, in which only trivial games could be played.”
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)