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