Quotes about gaming
page 2

Aldo Leopold photo

“Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend; you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left. That is to say, you cannot love game and hate predators… The land is one organism.”

Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) American writer and scientist

"Conservation" (c. 1938); Published in Round River, Luna B. Leopold (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1966, p. 145-146.
1930s
Context: Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land. … Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend; you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left. That is to say, you cannot love game and hate predators; you cannot conserve the waters and waste the ranges; you cannot build the forest and mine the farm. The land is one organism.

Terry Pratchett photo
Stephen King photo
Scott Lynch photo
Vladimir Nabokov photo

“Satire is a lesson, parody is a game.”

Interview with Nabokov http://lib.ru/NABOKOW/Inter06.txt_with-big-pictures.html conducted on September 25, 27, 28, 29, 1966, at Montreux, Switzerland and published in Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature, vol. VIII, no. 2, spring 1967.
Source: Strong Opinions

Eleanor H. Porter photo
Robert Baden-Powell photo

“The Scoutmaster teaches boys to play the game by doing so himself.”

Robert Baden-Powell (1857–1941) lieutenant-general in the British Army, writer, founder and Chief Scout of the Scout Movement
Marcel Duchamp photo
Lewis Carroll photo

“Once she remembered trying to box her own ears for having cheated herself in a game of croquet she was playing against herself, for this curious child was very fond of pretending to be two people.”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

Source: Alice's Adventures In Wonderland And Through The Looking Glass

Orhan Pamuk photo
Ludwig Wittgenstein photo
William Shakespeare photo
Stefan Zweig photo
William Shakespeare photo
Michael Jordan photo

“I've never lost a game I just ran out of time.”

Michael Jordan (1963) American retired professional basketball player and businessman

Source: For the Love of the Game

José Saramago photo
Emil M. Cioran photo
Ernest Hemingway photo
Dan Patrick photo

“Goodbye. Game over. Drive home safely.”

Dan Patrick (1956) American sportscaster

Catch Phrases

Bobby Fischer photo
Adam Weishaupt photo
Ludwig Wittgenstein photo
Adolfo Bioy Casares photo

“Life is a game of chess and you never really know when you are winning or losing.”

Adolfo Bioy Casares (1914–1999) Argentine novelist

"La vida es una partida de ajedrez y nunca sabe uno a ciencia cierta cuándo está ganando o perdiendo."
Una muñeca rusa, 1991.

Arthur Miller photo

“Certainly the most diverse, if minor, pastime of literary life is the game of Find the Author.”

Arthur Miller (1915–2005) playwright from the United States

Life (7 February 1964)

Jimmy Carr photo
José Saramago photo

“In between these four whitewashed walls, on this tiled floor, notice the broken corners, how some tiles have been worn smooth, how many feet have passed this way, and look how interesting this trail of ants is, travelling along the joins as if they were valleys, while up above, projected against the white sky of the ceiling and the sun of the lamp, tall towers are moving, they are men, as the ants well know, having, for generations, experienced the weight of their feet and the long, hot spout of water that falls from a kind of pendulous external intestine, ants all over the world have been drowned or crushed by these, but it seems they will escape this fate now, for the men are occupied with other things. […]
Let's take this ant, or, rather, let's not, because that would involve picking it up, let us merely consider it, because it is one of the larger ones and because it raises its head like a dog, it's walking along very close to the wall, together with its fellow ants it will have time to complete its long journey ten times over between the ants' nest and whatever it is that it finds so interesting, curious or perhaps merely nourishing in this secret room […]. One of the men has fallen to the ground, he's on the same level as the ants now, we don't know if he can see them, but they see him, and he will fall so often that, in the end, they will know by heart his face, the color of his hair and eyes, the shape of his ear, the dark arc of his eyebrow, the faint shadow at the corner of his mouth, and later, back in the ants' nest, they will weave long stories for the enlightenment of future generations, because it is useful for the young to know what happens out there in the world. The man fell and the others dragged him to his feet again, shouting at him, asking two different questions at the same time, how could he possibly answer them even if he wanted to, which is not the case, because the man who fell and was dragged to his feet will die without saying a word. Only moans will issue from his mouth, and in the silence of his soul only deep sighs, and even when his teeth are broken and he has to spit them out, which will prompt the other two men to hit him again for soiling state property, even then the sound will be of spitting and nothing more, that unconscious reflex of the lips, and then the dribble of saliva thickened with blood that falls to the floor, thus stimulating the taste buds of the ants, who telegraph from one to the other news of this singularly red manna fallen from such a white heaven.
The man fell again. It's the same one, said the ants, the same ear shape, the same arc of eyebrow, the same shadow at the corner of the mouth, there's no mistaking him, why is it that it is always the same man who falls, why doesn't he defend himself, fight back. […] The ants are surprised, but only fleetingly. After all, they have their own duties, their own timetables to keep, it is quite enough that they raise their heads like dogs and fix their feeble vision on the fallen man to check that he is the same one and not some new variant in the story. The larger ant walked along the remaining stretch of wall, slipped under the door, and some time will pass before it reappears to find everything changed, well, that's just a manner of speaking, there are still three men there, but the two who do not fall never stop moving, it must be some kind of game, there's no other explanation […]. [T]hey grab him by the shoulders and propel him willy-nilly in the direction of the wall, so that sometimes he hits his back, sometimes his head, or else his poor bruised face smashes into the whitewash and leaves on it a trace of blood, not a lot, just whatever spurts forth from his mouth and right eyebrow. And if they leave him there, he, not his blood, slides down the wall and he ends up kneeling on the ground, beside the little trail of ants, who are startled by the sudden fall from on high of that great mass, which doesn't, in the end, even graze them. And when he stays there for some time, one ant attaches itself to his clothing, wanting to take a closer look, the fool, it will be the first ant to die, because the next blow falls on precisely that spot, the ant doesn't feel the second blow, but the man does.”

Source: Raised from the Ground (1980), pp. 172–174

Peter Greenaway photo
Satoru Iwata photo
Zlatan Ibrahimović photo

“I score a lot of goals that are hard to replicate. I don't think that you can score as spectacular a goal as those of Zlatan in a video game - even though these games are very realistic these days.”

Zlatan Ibrahimović (1981) Swedish association football player

On his goals which are too good to be recreated on games consoles http://www.insideworldsoccer.com/2013/12/you-cant-copy-zlatan-ibrahimovic-goals-even-in-video-games.html.
Attributed

Magnus Carlsen photo

“I feel sorry for players who are always lying awake at night, brooding over their games.”

Magnus Carlsen (1990) Norwegian chess player

ChessBase.com - Magnus Carlsen on his chess career, 15 March 2010 http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=6187

Barack Obama photo

“I'm LeBron, baby. I can play on this level. I got some game.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

quoted by David Mendell. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/06/25/obama-im-lebron-baby-i-ca_n_53563.html
2004

Eric Garcetti photo
Kanye West photo
Joe Root photo
Peter L. Berger photo

“The game of sociology goes on in a spacious playground.”

Peter L. Berger (1929–2017) Austrian-born American sociologist

Source: Invitation to Sociology (1963), p. 29

John Nash photo
John D. Carmack photo

“The Xbox 360 is the first console that I've ever worked with that actually has development tools that are better for games than what we've had on PC.”

John D. Carmack (1970) American computer programmer, engineer, and businessman

Quoted in Seth Schiesel, Microsoft Unveils Games For Its New Xbox 360 http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0DE3DF1E30F935A35753C1A9639C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all The New York Times (2005-10-06)

Charles Bukowski photo
Albert Pujols photo

“Preparation is very important. The pitcher is going to do his job and prepare for you so you as a hitter must do the same. I always watch videotape of pitchers before the game and even sometimes during.”

Albert Pujols (1980) Dominican-American baseball player

When asked about the importance of preparation. http://sports.ign.com/articles/709/709384p1.html

Stefan Zweig photo
Conor McGregor photo

“I'm going to change the way martial arts is viewed. I'm going to change the game. I'm going to change the way people approach fighting.”

Conor McGregor (1988) Irish mixed martial artist and boxer

As quoted in "15 Best Conor McGregor Quotes" http://www.foxsportsasia.com/news/15-best-conor-mcgregor-quotes/, FOX Sports Asia
2010s, 2014

Ozzy Osbourne photo

“War is just another game
Tailor made for the insane
But make a threat of their annihilation
And nobody wants to play
If that's the only thing that keeps the peace
Then thank God for the bomb”

Ozzy Osbourne (1948) English heavy metal vocalist and songwriter

Thank God for the Bomb written by Robert John Daisley, Ozzy Osbourne, John Osbourne, Jake Williams, Robert Daisley
Song lyrics, The Ultimate Sin (1986)

Hidetaka Miyazaki photo
Theodore Roosevelt photo
Barack Obama photo

“Let's not play games. What I was suggesting — you're absolutely right that John McCain has not talked about my Muslim faith.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

"Obama's verbal slip fuels his critics" http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/sep/07/obama-verbal-slip-fuels-his-critics/?page=all by Christina Bellantoni, The Washington Times (7 September 2008)
2008

Tupac Shakur photo

“Currency means nothing if you still ain't free. Money breeds jealousy. Take the game from me; I hope for better days. Trouble comes naturally. Running from authorities. 'Til they capture me, and my aim is to spread more smiles than tears. Utilize lessons learned from my childhood years.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

"Hold Ya Head" https://play.google.com/music/preview/Te5ppuyfquh4t6lnlla3zs6w33e?lyrics=1&utm_source=google&utm_medium=search&utm_campaign=lyrics&pcampaignid=kp-lyrics
1990s, The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory (1996)

Abraham Lincoln photo

“I think to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game. Kentucky gone, we can not hold Missouri, nor, as I think, Maryland.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Letter to Orville Hickman Browning (22 September 1861)
1860s

Bobby Fischer photo
Takashi Tezuka photo
Max Scheler photo

“All ancient philosophers, poets, and moralists agree that love is a striving, an aspiration of the “lower” toward the “higher,” the “unformed” toward the “formed,” … “appearance” towards “essence,” “ignorance” towards “knowledge,” a “mean between fullness and privation,” as Plato says in the Symposium. … The universe is a great chain of dynamic spiritual entities, of forms of being ranging from the “prima materia” up to man—a chain in which the lower always strives for and is attracted by the higher, which never turns back but aspires upward in its turn. This process continues up to the deity, which itself does not love, but represents the eternally unmoving and unifying goal of all these aspirations of love. Too little attention has been given to the peculiar relation between this idea of love and the principle of the “agon,” the ambitious contest for the goal, which dominated Greek life in all its aspects—from the Gymnasium and the games to dialectics and the political life of the Greek city states. Even the objects try to surpass each other in a race for victory, in a cosmic “agon” for the deity. Here the prize that will crown the victor is extreme: it is a participation in the essence, knowledge, and abundance of “being.” Love is only the dynamic principle, immanent in the universe, which sets in motion this great “agon” of all things for the deity.
Let us compare this with the Christian conception. In that conception there takes place what might be called a reversal in the movement of love. The Christian view boldly denies the Greek axiom that love is an aspiration of the lower towards the higher. On the contrary, now the criterion of love is that the nobler stoops to the vulgar, the healthy to the sick, the rich to the poor, the handsome to the ugly, the good and saintly to the bad and common, the Messiah to the sinners and publicans. The Christian is not afraid, like the ancient, that he might lose something by doing so, that he might impair his own nobility. He acts in the peculiarly pious conviction that through this “condescension,” through this self-abasement and “self-renunciation” he gains the highest good and becomes equal to God. …
There is no longer any “highest good” independent of and beyond the act and movement of love! Love itself is the highest of all goods! The summum bonum is no longer the value of a thing, but of an act, the value of love itself as love—not for its results and achievements. …
Thus the picture has shifted immensely. This is no longer a band of men and things that surpass each other in striving up to the deity. It is a band in which every member looks back toward those who are further removed from God and comes to resemble the deity by helping and serving them.”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Source: Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912), L. Coser, trans. (1961), pp. 85-88

Steve Shutt photo

“One highlight I have was playing with all the great players in Montreal. They were not only great players but they were great people. If you look around, a lot of these guys are still in the game. Not only have they been successful with the Montreal Canadiens, but they've helped a lot of other organizations.”

Steve Shutt (1952) ice hockey player

Quoted in Kevin Shea, "One on One with Steve Shutt," http://www.legendsofhockey.net/html/spot_oneononep199303.htm Legends of Hockey.net (2004-01-10)
Shutt comments on playing with players like Ken Dryden, Bob Gainey, Jacques Lemaire, Larry Robinson, Serge Savard, Rejean Houle and Mario Tremblay.

John Lennon photo
C.G. Jung photo
Steve Blank photo

“The Silicon Valley culture is "I can win and you can win" - it isn't a sum-zero game.”

Steve Blank (1953) American businessman

Interview with Steve Blank (2013)

Saul Bellow photo
Theodore Roosevelt photo
Albert Pujols photo

“My wife Deidre bought the game for my son A. J. and he's loved it ever since. So when we had the opportunity to become a part of it, I couldn't say no.”

Albert Pujols (1980) Dominican-American baseball player

When asked about being featured on the cover of Backyard Baseball 2007. http://sports.ign.com/articles/709/709384p1.html

Takashi Tezuka photo

“Yeah. I want to keep heading in that direction so the games are a tool for family bonding. However, I want the games to be a tool for expanding upon previously existing good elements rather than for making something different.”

Takashi Tezuka (1960) video game designer

Source: Iwata Asks : Super Mario Bros. 25th Anniversary http://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/#/wii/mario25th/4/6,Nintendo.
Quote

Shigeru Miyamoto photo
Barack Obama photo

“I think Governor Romney maybe hasn't spent enough time looking at how our military works. You mentioned the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military's changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines. And so the question is not a game of Battleship, where we're counting ships. It's: What are our capabilities?”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Third presidential debate http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/presidential-debate-full-transcript/story?id=17538888, Lynn University, Boca Raton, Florida, , quoted in * 2012-10-23
Horses, bayonets, and battleships
Prachi
Gupta
Salon
http://www.salon.com/2012/10/23/horses_bayonets_and_battleships/
2012-10-24
2012

Jamal-al-Din Afghani photo

“The world is a game of chess; the loser loses and the winner wins.”

Jamal-al-Din Afghani (1837–1897) Political activist and Islamic ideologist

As quoted in Jamāḷ al-Dīn al-Afghāni: A Muslim intellectual (1984) by Anwar Moazzam, p. 3

Mike Tyson photo

“I have the same malice in my heart as far as the fight game is concerned, but outside the ring, I won't say anything a dignified man won't say.”

Mike Tyson (1966) American boxer

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1077/is_n11_v50/ai_17362107
On himself

Kanye West photo

“I had dreams of the game/Someday I'd play Kobe/I'd walk up to Puff and he don't really know me.”

Kanye West (1977) American rapper, singer and songwriter

https://www.florperfumes.com.br/perfume-pulse-beyonce-feminino Perfume Pulse Beyonce
Ego
Lyrics, Above and Beyoncé: Video Collection & Dance Mixes (2009)

Ludwig Wittgenstein photo
Wilhelm Reich photo

“If the psychic energies of the average mass of people watching a football game or a musical comedy could be diverted into the rational channels of a freedom movement, they would be invincible.”

Source: The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933), Ch. 1 : Ideology As Material Power, Section 4 : The Social Function of Sexual Suppression

Ozzy Osbourne photo
Abraham Lincoln photo
C.G. Jung photo

“One of the most difficult tasks men can perform, however much others may despise it, is the invention of good games and it cannot be done by men out of touch with their instinctive selves.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

Jung and the Story of Our Time, Laurens van der Post (1977)

Jack Welch photo
Barack Obama photo
Bobby Fischer photo
Conor McGregor photo

“One thing about martial arts: People can say this fight game is dangerous and its brutal but my mind is strong. I'm fit in body and mind and that's something that not a lot of other careers can give to a person.”

Conor McGregor (1988) Irish mixed martial artist and boxer

Setanta Sports interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaZQw3Dh0K0 (September 2014)
2010s, 2014

Ian Anderson photo

“Oh father high in heaven — smile down upon your son
Who's busy with his money games — his women and his gun.”

Ian Anderson (1947) Scottish musician, leader of Jethro Tull

"Hymn 43"
Aqualung (1971)

Hermann Rauschning photo
Peter Greenaway photo
Shigeru Miyamoto photo
Bobby Fischer photo

“Yeah, there are too many Jews in chess. They seem to have taken away the class of the game. They don't seem to dress so nicely, you know. That's what I don't like.”

Bobby Fischer (1943–2008) American chess prodigy, chess player, and chess writer

1960s, Portrait of a Genius As a Young Chess Master (1961)

G. H. Hardy photo
Mark Twain photo
Barack Obama photo
Jordan Peterson photo

“There are some games you don't get to play unless you are all in.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Other

Jack Welch photo
Jordan Peterson photo

“[I've changed a bit here - see youtube video "Jordan Peterson - Are YOU Antisocial?!"] We have these shared frames of reference, like when we're playing monopoly. Children at three learn to play games, which means that they learn to organize their own internal motivational states into a hierarchy that includes the emotional states of other people. And that means they can play. And that's what everyone does when they're out in the world. That's why we can go about our daily business - we all know the rules. That's why we can sit in the same room without fighting each other. Because you're smart and socially conscious, you can walk into a room full of people and know what to do. If you're civilized and social you can just do it, and you can predict what all the other primates are up to, and they won't kill you. That's what it means to be part of the same tribe. People are very peculiar creatures and God only knows what they're up to. As long as they're playing the same game that you are, you don't have to know what they're up to, and you can predict what they're going to do because you understand their motivational states. And so, part of the building and constructing of higher order moral goals is the establishment of joint frames of reference that allow multiple people to pursue the goals that they're interested in simultaneously. Not all shared frames of reference can manage that. There's a small subset of them that are optimized so that not only can multiple people play them, but multiple people can play them, AND enjoy them, AND do it repeatedly across a long period of time. So it's iterability that partly defines the utility of a higher order moral structure, and that is not arbitrary. It's an emergent property of biological interactions. It's not arbitrary at all, because a lot of what's constraining your games is your motivational substructure and those ancient circuits that are status oriented, which operate within virtually every animal. Virtually every animal has a status counter. Creatures organize themselves into dominance hierarchies. The reason they do that is because that works. It's a solution to the Darwinian problem of existence. It's not just an epiphenomena. It's the real thing. So your environment is fundamentally dominance hierarchy, plus God only knows where you are. And that's order and chaos. And part of the reason people fight to preserve their dominance hierarchies is because it's better to be a slave who knows what the hell is going on than someone who is thrown screaming and naked into the jungle at night. And that's the difference between order and chaos. And we like order better than chaos and it's no wonder. And invite a little chaos in for entertainment now and then, but it has to be done voluntarily, and generally you don't want the kind of chaos that upsets your entire conceptual structure. You're willing to fool around on the fringes a little bit, but you know, when the going gets serious you're pretty much likely to bail out.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Concepts

Johan Cruyff photo

“Football is now all about money. There are problems with the values within the game. And this is sad because football is the most beautiful game. We can play it in the street. We can play it everywhere. Everyone can play it but those values are being lost. We have to bring them back.”

Johan Cruyff (1947–2016) Dutch association football player

In an interview with The Guardian's Donald McRae in September 2014 https://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/sep/12/johan-cruyff-louis-van-gaal-manchester-united.

Alex Jones photo
Barack Obama photo

“I hope you guys are up for a fight. I hope you guys are game because I haven’t been putting up with 19 months of airplanes and hotel food and missing my babies and my wife — I didn’t put up for that stuff just to come in second.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

To supporters at a fund-raising party at Jon Bon Jovi's mansion in Duryea, Pennsylvania, (5 September 2008)
"Obama: 'I Don't Believe in Coming in Second'" by Jeff Zeleny (6 September 2008) http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/06/obama-i-dont-believe-in-coming-in-second/
2008

Jack Ma photo
Hidetaka Miyazaki photo
C.G. Jung photo
Theodore Roosevelt photo