Quotes about play
page 15

Amy Hempel photo
Tim Moore photo
Tom Petty photo
Harry Connick, Jr. photo

“I started making movies when I was 20. I started playing piano when I was about 3 years old, so I'm probably a musician first. But when I'm working on a movie, as an actor, I'm an actor - 100 percent. And when I'm on tour, I'm a musician 100 percent.”

Harry Connick, Jr. (1967) American singer, conductor, pianist, actor, and composer

The Costco Connection magazine interview, February 2007 http://www.costcoconnection.com/connection/200702/?pg=30

Yehudi Menuhin photo

“To play great music, you must keep your eyes on a distant star.”

Yehudi Menuhin (1916–1999) American violinist and conductor

Source: Rene J. Smith The Spirit of Flight http://books.google.co.in/books?id=Euu4e-4qNAUC&pg=PT30, Peter Pauper Press, Inc., 15 January 2012, p. 30

Robert Patrick (playwright) photo

“I want to give [my records] all away before some fool plays disco at my funeral, and then the record gets stuck, and nobody can tell, and the service goes on forever!”

Robert Patrick (playwright) (1937) Playwright, poet, lyricist, short story writer, novelist

"Pouf Positive"
Untold Decades: Seven Comedies of Gay Romance (1988)

Thom Yorke photo
Julia Gillard photo
Jürgen Klopp photo
Conrad Aiken photo
Jordan Peterson photo

“The importance of imitation for the development of higher cognition in human beings: We embody ideas before we abstract them out and then represent them in an articulated way. What is the child doing when they play house? They are watching their parent over multiple instantiations, and then abstracting out the spirit called Mother, and that is whatever is mother-like across all those multiple manifestations, and then laying out that pattern internally and manifesting it in an abstract world. It's that you're smart enough to pull out the abstraction, and then embody it. And certainly the child is striving toward an ideal. If children don't engage in that kind of dramatic and pretend play to some tremendous degree, then they don't get properly socialized. It's really a critical element of developing self understanding and of also developing the capability of being with others, because what you do when you're a child, especially around the age of four is: you jointly construct a shared fictional world, and then you act out your joint roles within that shared fictional world. Embodied imitation and dramatic abstraction constituted the ground out of which higher abstract cognition emerged. How else could it be? Clearly we were mostly bodies before we were minds. Clearly. And so we were acting out things way before we understood them.”

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

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_GPAl_q2QQ "Biblical Series III: God and the Hierarchy of Authority"

Alain de Botton photo
Jacob Bronowski photo

“The Principle of Uncertainty is a bad name. In science, or outside of it, we are not uncertain; our knowledge is merely confined, within a certain tolerance. We should call it the Principle of Tolerance. And I propose that name in two senses. First, in the engineering sense: Science has progressed, step by step, the most successful enterprise in the ascent of man, because it has understood that the exchange of information between man and nature, and man and man, can only take place with a certain tolerance. But second, I also use the word, passionately, about the real world. All knowledge – all information between human beings – can only be exchanged within a play of tolerance. And that is true whether the exchange is in science, or in literature, or in religion, or in politics, or in any form of thought that aspires to dogma. It's a major tragedy of my lifetime and yours that scientists were refining, to the most exquisite precision, the Principle of Tolerance – and turning their backs on the fact that all around them, tolerance was crashing to the ground beyond repair. The Principle of Uncertainty or, in my phrase, the Principle of Tolerance, fixed once for all the realization that all knowledge is limited. It is an irony of history that at the very time when this was being worked out, there should rise, under Hitler in Germany and other tyrants elsewhere, a counter-conception: a principle of monstrous certainty. When the future looks back on the 1930's, it will think of them as a crucial confrontation of culture as I have been expounding it – the ascent of man against the throwback to the despots' belief that they have absolute certainty.”

Episode 11: "Knowledge or Certainty"
The Ascent of Man (1973)

André Weil photo

“An important point is that the p-adic field, or respectively the real or complex field, corresponding to a prime ideal, plays exactly the role, in arithmetic, that the field of power series in the neighborhood of a point plays in the theory of functions: that is why one calls it a local field.”

André Weil (1906–1998) French mathematician

as translated by Martin H. Krieger "A 1940 letter of André Weil on analogy in mathematics." http://www.ams.org/notices/200503/fea-weil.pdf Notices of the AMS 52, no. 3 (2005) pp. 334–341, quote on p. 340

Kabir photo
Michael Jordan photo
Chiaki Kuriyama photo

“I've been playing these schoolgirl roles in all my movies. Every time I went to the set, it felt like I was going to school.”

Chiaki Kuriyama (1984) Japanese actress and singer

Complex Magazine (February/March 2004)

Thomas Sowell photo

“If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 50 years ago, a liberal 25 years ago and a racist today.”

Thomas Sowell (1930) American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author

Creators Syndicate http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1998-11-28/news/9811270852_1_households-liberals-parents November 28, 1998.
1980s–1990s

“Rehearsing a play is making the word flesh. Publishing a play is reversing the process.”

Equus (Harmondsworth: Penguin, [1973] 1984), p. 8.

Robert Aumann photo
Georges Bataille photo
Thomas Moore photo

“Good at a fight, but better at a play;
Godlike in giving, but the devil to pay.”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

On a Cast of Sheridan's Hand.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Franklin D. Roosevelt photo

“Dear Sallie: I am very sorry you have a cold and you are in bed. I played with Mary today for a little while. I hope by tomorrow you will be able to be up. I am glad today [sic] that my cold is better. Your loving, Franklin D. Roosevelt.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

Roosevelt's first letter, written at age five to his mother Sara Roosevelt ("Sallie") who had been ill in her room at Hyde Park. She later supplied the date - "1887" - on beginning her collection.
F.D.R. : His Personal Letters, Early Years (2005), edited by Elliott Roosevelt http://books.google.com/books?id=8p25NCpzU7YC&pg=PA6, p. 6]
1880s

Ha-Joon Chang photo
Max Beerbohm photo

“The Socratic manner is not a game at which two can play.”

Max Beerbohm (1872–1956) English writer

Source: Zuleika Dobson http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/zdbsn11.txt (1911), Ch. XV

Eliza Dushku photo
Bill Evans photo
Max Scheler photo

“"Among the types of human activity which have always played a role in history, the soldier is least subject to ressentiment. Nietzsche is right in pointing out that the priest is most exposed to this danger, though the conclusions about religious morality which he draws from this insight are inadmissible. It is true that the very requirements of his profession, quite apart from his individual or national temperament, expose the priest more than any other human type to the creeping poison of ressentiment. In principle he is not supported by secular power; indeed he affirms the fundamental weakness of such power. Yet, as the representative of a concrete institution, he is to be sharply distinguished from the homo religiosus—he is placed in the middle of party struggle. More than any other man, he is condemned to control his emotions (revenge, wrath, hatred) at least outwardly, for he must always represent the image and principle of “peacefulness.” The typical “priestly policy” of gaining victories through suffering rather than combat, or through the counterforces which the sight of the priest's suffering produces in men who believe that he unites them with God, is inspired by ressentiment. There is no trace of ressentiment in genuine martyrdom; only the false martyrdom of priestly policy is guided by it. This danger is completely avoided only when priest and homo religiosus coincide."”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912)

Wilt Chamberlain photo
Ian McCulloch photo

“I wanna play football for the coach — Liverpool’s coach!”

Ian McCulloch (1959) singer, musician

Rolling Stone magazine (2009)

Peter Mayhew photo
W. S. Gilbert photo

“No money, no grovel!
(Actually an ad-lib introduced by Rutland Barrington when playing the rôle of Pooh-Bah, to the annoyance of Gilbert.)”

W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) English librettist of the Gilbert & Sullivan duo

The Mikado (1885)

Alexander Ovechkin photo

“I always look forward to playing in Toronto because it's such a historic city when it comes to hockey.”

Alexander Ovechkin (1985) Russian ice hockey player

Benjamin Leszcz (November 1, 2006) "They like us! They really like us!", Toronto Life, Toronto Life Publishing Company, Volume 40, Issue 11.

H. A. L. Fisher photo
Chris Cornell photo
Newton Lee photo
Martina Hingis photo

“Steffi has had some results in the past, but it's a faster, more athletic game now than when she played…. She is old now. Her time has passed.”

Martina Hingis (1980) Swiss tennis player

Long Road Back Graf Hopes For Smashing Return At The U.s. Open http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/sports/long-road-back-graf-hopes-smashing-return-u-s-open-article-1.818475

Bernie Parent photo
Alfred Horsley Hinton photo

“A little thought, however, will show that both aerial and linear perspective play as important a part in the heavens as on the earth beneath.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton (1863–1908) British photographer

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, Perspective of clouds, p. 96

Calvin Coolidge photo
Anthony Stewart Head photo

“I suppose I would be a logical choice to play the Doctor just because Giles, my character in Buffy, has the same light and dark sides and quirkiness as Doctor Who.”

Anthony Stewart Head (1954) English actor

Buffy man tops 'next Dr Who' poll http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/tv_and_radio/3276905.stm

“When does the improvisation begin? As we started to play or when we started talking about it?”

Mattin (1977) Spanish musician

Interview (May 2007)

Gary Gygax photo

“One more thing: don’t spend too much time merely reading. The best part of this work is the play, so play and enjoy!”

Gary Gygax (1938–2008) American writer and game designer

Preface http://web.archive.org/20080320021015/redcoat668.wordpress.com/2008/03/04/the-game-designers-barbecue-in-memory-of-gary-gygax-1938-2008/ to the Oriental Adventures (1985)

Edward Elgar photo

“Play it like something you hear down by the river.”

Edward Elgar (1857–1934) English composer

Diana M McVeagh Edward Elgar: His Life and Music (London: J. M. Dent, 1955) p. 163.
On the trio of the second movement of his Symphony No. 1.

Karel Appel photo

“The wastelands belong to my youth [c. 1930's]. When I was young I played in the outskirts of the city - watching the cranes at the harbour. There was no law but garbage, grass and wildflowers like boys and girls, rough, hot and sexual and full of hidden pleasures. Life and death are overlapping in the wastelands like in my paintings.”

Karel Appel (1921–2006) Dutch painter, sculptor, and poet

Appel's quote is referring to his youth in Amsterdam, in the outskirts and the ports of the Dutch city
Source: Karel Appel – the complete sculptures,' (1990), pp. 75-77 'Quotes', K. Appel (1989)

Roberto Clemente photo

“.. without any deformation caused by the silly fashion of the corset... she stands somewhat uneasily, with her arms out and knees bent, as if she is balancing. Shadows play over her body and highlight her womanly figure.”

Fritz Bleyl (1880–1966) German artist

c. 1906; as quoted in Ernst Kirchner's Streetwalkers: Art, Luxury, and Immorality in Berlin, 1913 - 1916, Simmons, Sherwin, in 'The Art Bulletin', Vol. 82, No. 1. March 2000, p. 121
Bleyl stated that he favored this model Isabella due to her natural body. Using only two tones of yellow in the poster, Bleyl was able to impart a clear sense of this woman's physique. It is precisely this that got Bleyl in trouble: the police censored this image because they saw pubic hair in the shadow below the belly, apparently giving it an inappropriate sexual power

Lee Child photo
Will Cuppy photo
Joanna MacGregor photo

“p>The inherent contradictions and binds men find themselves in in trying to become less macho in their relationship with a woman were poignantly expressed in a letter written by a young man to a New York newspaper in response to an article that addressed itself to a question posed by a woman writer—whether women would be able to think of a non-macho man as sexy. The letter writer wrote:I am by nature a gentle and non-aggressive 27-year-old man who often finds women turned off sexually by my tenderness and non-macho view of the world. I have come to realize that for all their talk, a lot of women still want the hairy, sexy, war-mongering, aggressive machoman of their dreams. So after several fruitless years as a gentle poet-man, I now turn myself into a heavy machismo when I go out with a woman. It works. I open the doors, I order the food and drinks, I decide which movie or play we will see. I keep my shirt unbuttoned down past my nipples and wear a gold chain around my neck with a carved elephant tusk medallion, and if the relationship is not working out, I make the first move and tell my companion that I'm sorry but we're through.The sad thing about all this is that it works.”

Herb Goldberg (1937–2019) American psychologist

After all those years of being naturally sensitive and gentle, and now I've got to turn myself inside out just to appear sexy. It's fun and it's nice, but I do wish I could just be myself again.</p></blockquote>
Who Is the Victim? Who Is the Oppressor?, pp. 165&ndash;166
The New Male (1979)

William Cowper photo
Orson Scott Card photo
Samuel Bowles photo
George William Curtis photo

“And are there no laws of moral health? Can they be outraged and the penalty not paid? Let a man turn out of the bright and bustling Broadway, out of the mad revel of riches and the restless, unripe luxury of ignorant men whom sudden wealth has disordered like exhilarating gas; let him penetrate through sickening stench the lairs of typhus, the dens of small-pox, the coverts of all loathsome disease and unimaginable crimes; let him see the dull, starved, stolid, lowering faces, the human heaps of utter woe, and, like Jefferson in contemplating slavery a hundred years ago in Virginia, he will murmur with bowed head, 'I tremble for this city when I remember that God is just'. Is his justice any surer in a tenement-house than it is in a State? Filth in the city is pestilence. Injustice in the State is civil war. 'Gentlemen', said George Mason, a friend and neighbor of Jefferson's, in the Convention that framed the Constitution, 'by an inscrutable chain of causes and effects Providence punishes national sins by national calamities'. 'Oh no. gentlemen, it is no such thing', replied John Rutledge of South Carolina. 'Religion and humanity have nothing to do with this question. Interest is the governing principle with nations'. The descendants of John Rutledge live in the State which quivers still with the terrible tread of Sherman and his men. Let them answer! Oh seaports and factories, silent and ruined! Oh barns and granaries, heaps of blackened desolation! Oh wasted homes, bleeding hearts, starving mouths! Oh land consumed in the fire your own hands kindled! Was not John Rutledge wrong, was not George Mason right, that prosperity which is only money in the purse, and not justice or fair play, is the most cruel traitor, and will cheat you of your heart's blood in the end?”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1860s, The Good Fight (1865)

Willie Mays photo
Arthur James Balfour photo

“…I made the statement off and on for 10-11 years that the abundance of knowledge, the abundance of information, will not lead to certainty; it will lead to pervasive skepticism. And, folks, that's exactly what has happened. It's like this. How do you really know, there is so much out there… This abundance has led to skepticism. And then the Internet has leveled the playing field.”

Josh McDowell (1939) American writer

[Apologist Josh McDowell: Internet the Greatest Threat to Christians, Christian Post, 2011-07-16, Anugrah, Kumar, http://www.christianpost.com/news/apologist-josh-mcdowell-internet-the-greatest-threat-to-christians-52382/, 2011-10-21]

Ernst Kaltenbrunner photo

“(While playing solitaire and sipping cognac) It's all a lot of crap. The game is up.”

Ernst Kaltenbrunner (1903–1946) Austrian-born senior official of Nazi Germany executed for war crimes

To Adolf Eichmann, about the war, at a mountain villa in Austria. Quoted in "The Last 100 Days" - by John Toland - 1966

André Maurois photo
Marlon Brando photo
Burkard Schliessmann photo
Winston S. Churchill photo

“First there are the Jews who, dwelling in every country throughout the world, identify themselves with that country, enter into its national life and, while adhering faithfully to their own religion, regard themselves as citizens in the fullest sense of the State which has received them. Such a Jew living in England would say, 'I am an English man practising the Jewish faith.' This is a worthy conception, and useful in the highest degree. We in Great Britain well know that during the great struggle the influence of what may be called the 'National Jews' in many lands was cast preponderatingly on the side of the Allies; and in our own Army Jewish soldiers have played a most distinguished part, some rising to the command of armies, others winning the Victoria Cross for valour. There is no need to exaggerate the part played in the creation of Bolshevism and in the actual bringing about of the Russian Revolution, by these international and for the most part atheistical Jews, it is certainly a very great one; it probably outweighs all others. With the notable exception of Lenin, the majority of the leading figures are Jews. Moreover, the principal inspiration and driving power comes from the Jewish leaders. Thus Tchitcherin, a pure Russian, is eclipsed by his nominal subordinate Litvinoff, and the influence of Russians like Bukharin or Lunacharski cannot be compared with the power of Trotsky, or of Zinovieff, the Dictator of the Red Citadel (Petrograd) or of Krassin or Radek -- all Jews. In the Soviet institutions the predominance of Jews is even more astonishing. And the prominent, if not indeed the principal, part in the system of terrorism applied by the Extraordinary Commissions for Combating Counter-Revolution has been taken by Jews, and in some notable cases by Jewesses. The same evil prominence was obtained by Jews in the brief period of terror during which Bela Kun ruled in Hungary. The same phenomenon has been presented in Germany (especially in Bavaria), so far as this madness has been allowed to prey upon the temporary prostration of the German people. Although in all these countries there are many non-Jews every whit as bad as the worst of the Jewish revolutionaries, the part played by the latter in proportion to their numbers in the population is astonishing.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

"Zionism versus Bolshevism", Illustrated Sunday Herald (February 1920)
Early career years (1898–1929)

Eunice Kennedy Shriver photo
Viswanathan Anand photo
Nancy Reagan photo
Clive Staples Lewis photo
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston photo

“We may also, I think, congratulate ourselves on the part that the British Empire has played in this struggle, and on the position which it fills at the close. Among the many miscalculations of the enemy was the profound conviction, not only that we had a "contemptible little Army," but that we were a doomed and decadent nation. The trident was to be struck from our palsied grasp, the Empire was to crumble at the first shock; a nation dedicated, as we used to be told, to pleasure-taking and the pursuit of wealth was to be deprived of the place to which it had ceased to have any right, and was to be reduced to the level of a second-class, or perhaps even of a third-class Power. It is not for us in the hour of victory to boast that these predictions have been falsified; but, at least, we may say this—that the British Flag never flew over a more powerful or a more united Empire than now; Britons never had better cause to look the world in the face; never did our voice count for more in the councils of the nations, or in determining the future destinies of mankind. That that voice may be raised in the times that now lie before us in the interests of order and liberty, that that power may be wielded to secure a settlement that shall last, that that Flag may be a token of justice to others as well as of pride to ourselves, is our united hope and prayer.”

George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) British politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1918/nov/18/the-armistice-address-to-his-majesty in the House of Lords (18 November 1918).

Richard Dawkins photo
Eric Holder photo
Studs Terkel photo
George Klir photo
Kumar Sangakkara photo

“I just want to congratulate Kumar again on a wonderful career. I have spoken a lot about him, everyone has, in the last week, but I can't help saying it again that it has been an absolute pleasure playing with you.”

Kumar Sangakkara (1977) Sri Lankan cricketer

Virat Kohli, "Virat Kohli Says it Has Been a Pleasure Playing With Kumar Sangakkara" http://sports.ndtv.com/sri-lanka-vs-india-2015/news/247470-virat-kohli-says-it-has-been-a-pleasure-playing-with-kumar-sangakkara, August 24, 2015.
About

Marshall McLuhan photo
V. P. Singh photo

“Most of the network related programming in games has to do with providing a good interactive experience when playing over the internet. This matter is very different from serving web pages. The primary concern there is to handle connection latency, latency fluctuations, packet loss and bandwidth limitations, and pretty much hide all of that from the player's experience.”

Timothee Besset French software programmer

Quoted in Brian Boyko, "ID Software Developer Timothee Besset on Network Performance in Games" http://www.networkperformancedaily.com/2007/01/id_software_developer_timothee.html Network Performance Daily (2007-01-29).

Joanna MacGregor photo
Brian Wilson photo
Neal Stephenson photo
Vytautas Juozapaitis photo

“Baritone Vytautas Juozapaitis was perfectly full of himself as Don Giovanni. His hilarious interactions with sidekick Leporello, played by the animated bass-baritone Stefano de Peppo were the highlights of the show.”

Vytautas Juozapaitis (1963) Lithuanian opera singer

"Mozart Company proves opera can be fun", The Star Presss (November, 2004) http://www.jennykellyproductions.com/prod_mozart_review.htm

Vivek Wadhwa photo
Dorothy Parker photo
Anthony Weiner photo
Robert Lighthizer photo

“It is a very high honor to represent our nation and to serve in President-elect Trump’s administration as the U. S. Trade Representative. I am fully committed to President-elect Trump’s mission to level the playing field for American workers and forge better trade policies which will benefit all Americans”

Robert Lighthizer (1947) US Trade Representative

President-Elect Donald J. Trump Nominates Robert Lighthizer as United States Trade Representative https://greatagain.gov/ustr-dcf9bf87f3bd#.z97dbyqvy (January 3, 2017)

Peter Weiss photo
Beck photo