"In their own political engagements infinite players make a distinction between society and culture. Society they understand as the sum of those relations that are under some form of public constraint, culture as whatever we do with each other by undirected choice."

"Deviancy, however, is the very essence of culture. Whoever merely follows the script, merely repeating the past, is culturally impoverished."

"Unrepeatability is a characteristic of culture everywhere. Mozart's Jupiter Symphony cannot be composed again, nor could Rembrandt's self-portraits be painted twice. Society preserves these works as the prizes of those who have triumphed in their respective games. Culture, however, does not consider the works as the outcome of a struggle, but as moments in an ongoing struggle -- the very struggle that culture is. Culture continues what Mozart and Rembrandt had themselves continued by way of their work: an original, or deviant, shaping of the tradition they received, original enough that it does not invite duplication of itself by others, but invites the originality of others in response."

"Just as an infinite game has rules, a culture has a tradition. Since the rules of play in an infinite game are freely agreed to and freely altered, a cultural tradition is both adopted and transformed in its adoption."

"Properly speaking, a culture does not have a tradition; it IS a tradition."

"For example, it is one thing for persons to choose to be Americans, quite another for persons to choose to be America. Societal thinking easily permits the former, never the latter."