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Play Quotes

Page history last edited by Gail Matthews-DeNatale 14 years ago

Play Quotes

 

Pages in this wiki:

Home, Play Theories, Designing for Play-Based Learning, Bib/Webography, Quotes

 

Note:

The following quotes are culled from the Strong National Museum of Play and other miscellanous places.

 

Librarians at the 2007 ALA play Dance Dance Revolution

It is a happy talent to know how to play. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson

American writer

1803-1882

 

Life must be lived as play.

Plato

Greek philosopher

427-347 BCE

 

There's a good case to be made that having fun is a key evolutionary advantage right next to opposable thumbs in terms of importance.  Without that little chemical twist in our brains that makes us enjoy learning new things, we might be more like the sharks and ants of the world.

Ralph Koster

Game Designer

Dates Unknown

 

 

In our play we reveal what kind of people we are.

Ovid

Roman poet

43 BCE-17

 

Play is our brain's favorite way of learning.

Diane Ackerman

Contemporary American author

 

Culture arises and unfolds in and as play.

Johan Huizinga

Dutch historian

1872-1945

 

Almost all creativity involves purposeful play.

Abraham Maslow

American psychologist

1908-1970

 

Whoever wants to understand much must play much.

Gottfried Benn

German physician

1886-1956

 

Play is the only way the highest intelligence of humankind can unfold.

Joseph Chilton Pearce

Contemporary American scholar

 

The true object of all human life is play.

G. K. Chesterton

British author

1874-1936

 

Play gives children a chance to practice what they are learning.

Fred Rogers

American television personality

1928-2003

 

A child loves his play, not because it’s easy, but because it’s hard.

Benjamin Spock

American pediatrician

1903-1998

 

Play fosters belonging and encourages cooperation.

Stuart Brown, M.D.

Contemporary American psychiatrist

 

Play has been man’s most useful preoccupation.

Frank Caplan

Contemporary American author

 

To the art of working well a civilized race would add the art of playing well.

George Santayana

American philosopher

1863-1952

 

People tend to forget that play is serious.

David Hockney

Contemporary British painter

 

Children need the freedom and time to play. Play is not a luxury. Play is a necessity.

Kay Redfield Jamison

Contemporary American professor of psychiatry

 

Do not…keep children to their studies by compulsion but by play.

Plato

Greek philosopher

427-347 BCE

 

Deep meaning lies often in childish play.

Johann Friedrich von Schiller

German poet

1759-1805

 

Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play.

Heraclitus

Greek philosopher

535-475 BCE

 

Surely all God’s people…like to play.

John Muir

American naturalist

1838-1914

 

Children at play are not playing about. Their games should be seen as their most serious minded activity.

Michel de Montaigne

French essayist

1533-1592

 

Necessity may be the mother of invention, but play is certainly the father.

Roger von Oech

Contemporary American creativity guru

 

Play keeps us fit physically and mentally.

Stuart Brown, M.D.

Contemporary American psychiatrist

 

You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.

Plato

Greek philosopher

427-347 BCE

 

The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct.

Carl Jung

Swiss psychoanalyst

1875-1961

 

In play a child always behaves beyond his average age, above his daily behavior. In play it is as though he were a head taller than himself.

Lev Vygotsky

Russian psychologist

1896-1934

 

Creative people are curious, flexible, persistent, and independent with a tremendous spirit of adventure and a love of play.

Henri Matisse

French painter

1869-1954

 

The opposite of play is not work. It’s depression.

Brian Sutton-Smith

Contemporary American folklorist

 

Play is training for the unexpected.

Marc Bekoff

Contemporary American biologist

 

Creative play is like a spring that bubbles up from deep within a child.

Joan Almon

Contemporary American educator

 

Children learn as they play. Most importantly, in play children learn how to learn.

O. Fred Donaldson

Contemporary American martial arts master

 

Human beings need pleasure the way they need vitamins.

Lionel Tiger

Contemporary Canadian anthropologist

 

Those who play rarely become brittle in the face of stress or lose the healing capacity for humor.

Stuart Brown, M.D.

Contemporary American psychiatrist

 

When children pretend, they’re using their imaginations to move beyond the bounds of reality. A stick can be a magic wand. A sock can be a puppet. A small child can be a superhero.

Fred Rogers

American children’s television host

1928-2003

 

The debt we owe to the play of the imagination is incalculable.

Carl Jung

Swiss psychoanalyst

1875-1961

 

In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play.

Friedrich Nietzsche

German philosopher

1844-1900

 

Play is hard to maintain as you get older. You get less playful. You shouldn’t, of course.

Richard Feynman

American physicist

1918-1988

 

Just play. Have fun. Enjoy the game.

Michael Jordan

American basketball player

 

Children have always learned and created places for themselves through play.

Donna R. Barnes

Contemporary American psychologist

 

There is for many a poverty of play.

D.W. Winnicott

British pediatrician

1896-1971

 

Play allows us to develop alternatives to violence and despair; it helps us learn perseverance and gain optimism.

Stuart Brown M.D.

Contemporary American psychiatrist

 

The very existence of youth is due in part to the necessity for play; the animal does not play because he is young, he has a period of youth because he must play.

Karl Groos

German evolutionary biologist

1861-1946

 

If you want to be creative, stay in part a child, with the creativity and invention that characterizes children before they are deformed by adult society.

Jean Piaget

Swiss philosopher

1896-1980

 

A child who does not play is not a child, but the man who does not play has lost forever the child who lived in him.

Pablo Neruda

Chilean poet

1904-1973

 

I believe that those boys who take part in rough, hard play outside of school will not find any need for horse-play in school.

Theodore Roosevelt

American president

1858-1919

 

It is in playing, and only in playing, that the individual child or adult is able to be creative and to use the whole personality, and it is only in being creative that the individual discovers the self.

D.W. Winnicott

British pediatrician

1896-1971

 

Now in myth and ritual the great instinctive forces of civilized life have their origin: law and order, commerce and profit, craft and art, poetry, wisdom and science. All are rooted in the primeval soil of play.

Johan Huizing

a Dutch historian1872-1945

 

The playing adult steps sideward into another reality; the playing child advances forward to new stages of mastery.

Erik H. Erikson

American psychoanalyst

1902-1994

 

Ritual grew up in sacred play; poetry was born in play and nourished on play; music and dancing were pure play.... We have to conclude, therefore, that civilization is, in its earliest phases, played. It does not come from play...it arises in and as play, and never leaves it.

Johan Huizing

a Dutch historian1872-1945

 

We all need empty hours in our lives or we will have no time to create or dream.

Robert Coles

Contemporary American child psychologist

 

The child amidst his baubles is learning the action of light, motion, gravity, muscular force….

Ralph Waldo Emerson

American writer

1803-1882

 

So, in all these spheres—in painting, sculpture, drawing, music, singing, dancing, gymnastics, games, sports, writing and speech—we can carry on to our heart’s content, all through our long lives, complex and specialized forms of exploration and experiment.

Desmond Morris

Contemporary British zoologist

 

Play, while it cannot change the external realities of children’s lives, can be a vehicle for children to explore and enjoy their differences and similarities and to create, even for a brief time, a more just world where everyone is an equal and valued participant.

Patricia G. Ramsey

Contemporary American educational psychologist

 

As astronauts and space travelers children puzzle over the future; as dinosaurs and princesses they unearth the past. As weather reporters and restaurant workers they make sense of reality; as monsters and gremlins they make sense of the unreal.

Gretchen Owocki

Contemporary American early childhood educator

 

Pausing to listen to an airplane in the sky, stooping to watch a ladybug on a plant, sitting on a rock to watch the waves crash over the quayside – children have their own agendas and timescales. As they find out more about their world and their place in it; they work hard not to let adults hurry them. We need to hear their voices.

Cathy Nutbrown

Contemporary British educational theorist

 

You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.

Plato quotes (Ancient Greek Philosopher. 428 BC-348 BC)

 

Play is the only way the highest intelligence of humankind can unfold.

Joseph Chilton Pearce (Child Development Author)

 

It is paradoxical that many educators and parents still differentiate between a time for learning and a time for play without seeing the vital connection between them.

Leo F. Buscaglia quotes (Education Specialist, 1924-1998)

 

If animals play, this is because play is useful in the struggle for survival; because play practices and so perfects the skills needed in adult life.

Susanna Miller

 

Play is the exultation of the possible.

Martin Buber (German Philosopher, 1878-1965)

 

Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play.

Heraclitus (Greek Philosopher, circa 535–475 BCE)

 

 We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.

George Bernard Shaw (Playwright, 1856-1960)

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