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)
“What means the fact—which is so common, so universal—that some soul that has lost all hope for itself can inspire in another listening soul an infinite confidence in it, even while it is expressing its despair?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“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)