Quotes about play
page 19

“Our roles are chose for us in this world by the stern dictates of an unrelenting Fate; and many a man who thought to play the emperor on Life’s stage found himself cast for a corpse instead.”

Robert Sheckley book Mindswap

Source: Mindswap (1966), Chapter 26 (p. 124)

Life, Fate, World

“Surely all God's people, however serious and savage, great or small, like to play. Whales and elephants, dancing, humming gnats, and invisibly small mischievous microbes, — all are warm with divine radium and must have lots of fun in them.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

The Story of My Boyhood and Youth http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/the_story_of_my_boyhood_and_youth/ (1913), chapter 5: Young Hunters 1910s

God, People, Dance

“Tradition is not, as post-modernists maintain, a library or museum the artist plunders. It is the endless conversation between the living and the dead. Young artists enter into this conversation passionately — not merely intellectually, though study and analysis play a part. They live and breathe it. Tradition is not a public building. It is a love affair.”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

"Paradigms Lost," interview with Gloria Brame, ELF: Eclectic Literary Forum (Spring 1995)
Interviews

Love, Study, Passion, Parting

“Now all the week long we've gone through that period of preparation, gettin' ourselves ready, askin' God to get us ready, askin' Him to purge us with His discipline and burn us with his fire and cleanse us and make us holy and ready to stand. For when you go down to downtown, you are goin' down there amidst mean and cruel people. Your'e goin' down there 'midst the police force and you've got to have God on your side. So you need to get ready. Ask Him to prepare you as He did Shadrach, Meshach and ABednego. You know, when they went to the fiery furnance, they said to the king, "We will not bow" But God was on their side… Just like God went in the fiery furnace with the three Hebrew boys, God will go with us on whatever operation we decide on. Now, you can't win the battle at home. You got to go to the battlefield. Now when you go to the battlefield, ain't no need to go out there without expectin' to have some casualitites. Somebody will get hurt. I don't know who it will be. It may be me. If it is me, I can only rejoice in the Lord that I had a little part to play… Now nobody can enjoin God. I don't care what kind of injuction the city attorney seeks to get, he cannot enjoin God. This is God's movement. Nobody can enjoin God. There can be no injuction against God. Because Albany does not belong to the Democratic Party of the state of Georgia. Albany does not beong to the Republicans of the state of Georgia. Albany does not belong to Governor Vandiver. Albany does not belong to the white people of the state of Georgia. All-benny belongs to God, for the prophet said: "The earth is the Lord's, and the fulllnes thereof, the world and they that dwell therein."”

Ralph Abernathy (1926–1990) American Civil Rights Movement leader

And this is God's world, this is God's All-benny, and God tells us that out of one blood He created all nations that dwell upon the face of this earth."
In a sermon he gave on 15 December 1961, during the Albany Movement; as quoted in Watters, Pat. 2012. Down to Now: Reflections on the Southern Civil Rights Movement. University of Georgia Press. pp. 202-203.

God, People, World, Home

“Knowledge isolates phenomena and things to observe with.... nothing is isolatable or can be removed from its environment. Anything which becomes isolated ceases to exist. It is like the violent refusal of someone to play a game in which everyone cheats.”

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

Karel Appel – the complete sculptures,' (1990) not-paged

Game, Knowledge, Cheating

“If you annoy the Hog-nosed Snake enough, he will roll over on his back and play dead. If you turn him right-side up, he will roll over to prove that he is dead. [Footnote:] While he is playing dead, you can go straight up to him and step on his head or smash him with a big club.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

The Hog-Nosed Snake
How to Become Extinct (1941)

Dead

“It is wise not to confuse information and inspiration. The former is the result of studious application, the latter is what happens when you don't think about it.
Each has a role to play, but must not look to play the role of the other. Inspiration may be the bright tower in the clouds; information is the solid rock where the foundations are.”

John Howe (illustrator) (1957) Canadian illustrator

Source: John Howe : Fantasy Art Workshop (2007), p. 11

Thinking

“If we played like that every week we wouldn't be so inconsistent.”

Bryan Robson (1957) English footballer and manager

http://www.blakjak.demon.co.uk/soccer.htm

“The well known elevation of the pitch of wind instruments, in the course of playing, sometimes amounting to half a note, is not, as is commonly supposed, owing to any expansion of the instrument, for this should produce a contrary effect, but to the increased warmth of the air in the tube.”

Thomas Young (scientist) (1773–1829) English polymath

"Outlines of Experiments and Inquiries Respecting Sound and Light" (1800)

“If I don't get a chance to play with my son in the morning, I feel like I missed something that I'll never get back. It's such a joy to wake up and be in the mindset of a five-year-old before transitioning into the role of "executive."”

Biz Stone (1974) American blogger; co-founder of Twitter

"The co-founder of Twitter plays with his son for an hour every morning—here's why" https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/22/twitter-co-founder-biz-stone-starts-each-morning-playing-with-his-son.html, in CNBC.com (22 May 2018).

Feeling, Chance, Joy

“Oh, call my brother back to me!
I cannot play alone:
The summer comes with flower and bee,—
Where is my brother gone?”

Felicia Hemans The Child's First Grief

The Child's First Grief (1828).

Flowers, Bee, Summer

“And another thing I like about cricket is, because most of the commentators apart from Boycott and Trueman are very old-worldly, they have an innocence and naïveté about them, that makes them sometimes say, in the course of their commentary, inadvertently rude things: 'Now we're at the start of play, and we're coming in to play; and the bowler's Holding, the batman's Willey'; 'Here we are, and we're about to commence play. And there's Simpson, in his usual position, standing with his legs wide open, at first slip, waiting for a tickle.”

Linda Smith (1958–2006) comedian

Linda Live, 1993
Stand-up

Waiting

“At one point we got some German sausages for dinner, and my girl Anna was working the communal tomato sauce pump and she whacked it and it all squirted over my pants, and suddenly there was silence, and I realised that Muse had stopped playing, and the entire 20 odd thousand punters were looking at me, and suddenly I just threw my hands up and said ‘anyone for sauce?’ and everyone just burst into laughter and suddenly Peaches was there and she said ‘you’re alright kid’ and we high fived and then I crowd surfed all the way onto stage and Muse let me play the guitar solo for one of their songs and even though I’d never heard it I just winged it and it was awesome.”

Justin Heazlewood (1980) Australian musician and comedian

online Laptopping http://www.bedroomphilosopher.com/2007/02/20/laptopping-things-oclock/, Bedroom Philosopher (February 20, 2007).

Way, Girl, Communication, Laughter

“Maturity: among other things, the unclouded happiness of the child at play, who takes it for granted that he is at one with his play-mates.”

Dag Hammarskjöld (1905–1961) Swedish diplomat, economist, and author

Markings (1964)

Happiness

“What I have been talking about is knowledge. Knowledge, perhaps, is not a good word for this. Perhaps one would rather say my image of the world. Knowledge has an implication of validity, of truth. What I am talking about is what I believe to be true; my subjective knowledge. It is this Image that largely governs my behavior. In about an hour I shall rise, leave my office, go to a car, drive down to my home, play with the children, have supper, perhaps read a book, go to bed. I can predict this behavior with a fair degree to accuracy because of the knowledge which I have: the knowledge that I have a home not far away, to which I am accustomed to go. The prediction, of course, may not be fulfilled. There may be an earthquake, I may have an accident with the car on the way home, I may get home to find that my family has been suddenly called away. A hundred and one things may happen. As each event occurs, however, it alters my knowledge structure or my image. And as it alters my image, I behave accordingly. The first proposition of this work, therefore, is that behavior depends on the image.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1950s, The Image: Knowledge in Life and Society, 1956, p. 5

Children, Truth, Books, World

“No one except a dumb thief plays with the security of others and then makes himself believe he will be secure. Whereas thinking people, when disaster strikes, make it their priority to look for its causes, in order to prevent it happening again.”

Osama bin Laden (1957–2011) founder of al-Qaeda

2000s, 2004, 2004 Video Broadcast on Al-Jazeera October 29

People, Thinking

“It was neither healthy nor good when public stock exchanges introduced order types and speed advantages that high-frequency traders could use to exploit everyone else. This sort of inefficiency didn't vanish the moment it was spotted and acted upon. It was like a broken slot machine in the casino that pays off every time. It would keep paying off until someone said something about it; but no one who played the slot machine had any interest in pointing out that it was broken.”

Michael Lewis book Flash Boys

Source: Flash Boys (2014), p. 233

Time, Speed

“I will achieve it only [being an artist] by perseverance, and by openly asserting my determination to emancipate myself, [but].... I both lament and envy your [Edma's] fate. Bichette [her niece] helps me to understand maternal love; she comes onto my bed every morning and plays so sweetly.... life gets more complicated by the day here now I am gripped by the desire to have children, that' all I need.”

Berthe Morisot (1841–1895) painter from France

in an unpublished extract from a letter of Berthe to Edma, written in 1869; as cited in The Correspondence of Berthe Morisot, ed. Denis Rouart; Camden, London 1986 / Kinston, R. I. Moyer Bell, 1989, p. 31 (private collection)
1860 - 1870

Love, Life, Fate, Children

“I was a young man in the ’80s, and I was into medieval weapons, Harleys and Heavy Metal. I even played D&D back when that was supposed to induct players into real-life witchcraft. So I remember all the ridiculous superstition surrounding the secret meanings of ear piercing, the pseudo-paganism of Procter & Gamble, the seemingly Satanic messages in back-masking, and the allegedly suicidal insinuations of some metal albums. I attribute a lot of that to the fact that atheism didn’t have any appreciable presence back then. In those days, if you didn’t buy into Christian dogma and were openly critical of it, then you were a witch. You were either a neo-pagan or (more likely) you were Satanic. The latter would be applied regardless how you might prefer to identify. To my cultural experience, there was no such thing as a skeptic as that is known today. Back then, skeptics were considered cynics who refused to open their minds. It must have been a great time for paranoid Christian conservatives. They actually like Satanists a lot more than atheists. Because Satanists not only play the Christian game; they give Christians the moral high ground. Whereas atheists piss everybody off by pointing out that it is a game and that every believer in any religion is just pretending.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Patheos, Satanic Panic and Exorcism in Schools? http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2016/09/21/satanic-panic-and-exorcism-in-schools/ (September 21, 2016)

Life, Secret, Religion, Game

“The difference between a great soul and an ordinary man is this: the latter weeps while leaving this body, whereas the former laughs. Death seems to him a mere play.”

Sarada Devi (1853–1920) Hindu religious figure, spiritual consort of Ramakrishna

[Swami Tapasyananda, Swami Nikhilananda, Sri Sarada Devi, the Holy Mother; Life and Conversations, 253]

Death, Soul

“Maybe the years I spent playing the piano in taverns in Chicago and elsewhere led me to believe that the people who did that mundane work were as important to an understanding of art as the better-known players who produced the recognized classics of jazz. Growing up … may have led me to think that the craftsman who help make art works areas important as the people who conceive them… Learning the "Chicago tradition" of sociology from Everett C. Hughes and Herbert Blumer surely led to a skepticism about conventional definitions of the objects of sociological study.”

Howard S. Becker (1928) American sociologist

Source: Art Worlds (1982), p. ix.

People, Art, Understanding, Thinking

“And then, for an old man like me, it's not exactly right,
This kind o' playing soldier with no enemy in sight.”

Bret Harte (1836–1902) American author and poet

East and West Poems, Part I, The Old Major Explains.

““Well, birth control’s easy. The first thing you have to know is that it doesn’t work.”
“What?”
“Not consistently. No matter how careful you are, every time you play hide-the-salami with the boys, you’re running the risk of ending up with a belly full of consequences.”
“But—”
“Contraceptive spells are never entirely reliable. That’s because their power comes from the Mother, and the Mother wants children. Each cantrip has its loophole, every fetish its flaw. Ultimately, contraception is just a way of luring you into playing her game.”
“You mean that sooner or later it’s going to fail me?”
“That’s not what I said. It works well enough for enough of us that the rest will take their chances. But the odds are never going to be as good as you’d like them to be. There are no guarantees.””

Michael Swanwick book The Iron Dragon's Daughter

Source: The Iron Dragon's Daughter (1993), Chapter 10 (pp. 168-169)

Children, Way, Game, Boy

“They thought war was a game and every defeat only made them more eager to play.”

Bernard Cornwell The Grail Quest

Philip of Valois, King of France, regarding his more reckless nobles, p. 4
The Grail Quest, Heretic (2003)

War, Game

“We are missing stories of women who are literally keeping life going in the midst of wars. Do you know -- do you know that people fall in love in war and go to school and go to factories and hospitals and get divorced and go dancing and go playing and live life going? And the ones who are keeping that life are women.”

Zainab Salbi (1969) Iraqi American author, women's rights activist

Speech at TEDGlobal 2010

Love, Life, Women, War

“Our first objective in undertaking the experimental program described here has been to gain some understanding of what goes on in long sequences of plays of Prisoner's Dilemma. We have attempted to gain this understanding by postulating a system going through a sequence of states and by attempting to formulate some mathematical models from which the dynamics of the system could be deduced. Once such a model is found, its parameters, properly interpreted, become the key terms in the emerging psychological theory. This strategy can be deemed successful, if the parameters so discovered are independent of the process itself, if they suggest further investigation, and if the further investigations, in turn, lead to a more inclusive theory.”

Anatol Rapoport (1911–2007) Russian-born American mathematical psychologist

Source: 1960s, Prisoner's dilemma: A study in conflict and cooperation (1965), p. 185

Mathematics, Understanding, Success

“It is a recognised fact that the greatest composers were likewise the greatest virtuosos; but did they play like the pianists of the present day, who run up and down the keyboard with passages studied beforehand? Pooh! pooh! pooh! Don't tell me! A real virtuoso, when extemporising, plays pieces which hold together and possess a form. Were the ideas in them fixed instantly on paper, they would be taken for pieces written at leisure. That is what I call playing the piano; everything else is a bad joke.”

Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770–1827) German Romantic composer

24th November, 1814
Source: Johann Wenzel Tomaschek, "A Talk with Beethoven", The Musical Times and Singing Class Circular, Vol. 33, Beethoven Supplement (Dec. 15, 1892)

Idea, Study

“Yes, but there is the problem. It would have been banal. Mediocre. We had been trained to despise everything which was not excellent. How disgusting to see the father of one of our classmates or friends on vacation playing cards or, even worse, siting on the sofa watching television. We blush with shame for our unfortunate little friend.”

André Weil (1906–1998) French mathematician

From At home with André and Simone Weil by Sylvie Weil, p. 30 https://books.google.com/books?id=OdeDlT9-GBUC&pg=PA30 Quote About

Problem, Training

“First and foremost, yoga made its contribution to my quest to understand consciously the mechanics of violin playing, a quest which by 1951 had long been one of the themes of my life. All influences pointed to less tension, more effective application of energy, the breaking down of resistance in every joint, the coordination of all motions into one motion; and illustrated the profound truth that strength comes not from strength but from the subtle comprehension of process, proportion and balance.”

Yehudi Menuhin (1916–1999) American violinist and conductor

Source: The Dawn of Indian Music in the West http://books.google.co.in/books?id=OSZKCXtx-wEC&pg=PA46, A&C Black, 24 April 2006, p. 46

Life, Truth, Understanding

“Shaw's plays are the price we pay for Shaw’s prefaces.”

James Agate (1877–1947) British diarist and critic

Ego, p. 276, March 10, 1933.

“No girl, however coolly her blood may flow, can be pressed to a man's breast, wildly throbbing with love for her, and not experience some agitation in consequence. Whatever may be the state of her sentiments, there is a magnetism in such a contact which she cannot at once throw off. That kiss had brought her relations with Henry to a crisis. It had precipitated the necessity of some decision. She could no longer hold him off, and play with him. By that bold dash he had gained a vantage-ground, a certain masterful attitude which he had never held before. Yet, after all, I am not sure that she was not just a little afraid of him, and, moreover, that she did not like him all the better for it.”

Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) American author and socialist

Source: Dr. Heidenhoff's Process http://www.gutenberg.org/files/7052/7052-h/7052-h.htm (1880), Ch. 3.

Love, Girl, Kiss, Decision

“The morning slips away in a Valium haze and catalogues,
And numerous cups of coffee,
In the afternoon the weekly food is put in bags - as you float off down the high street.
The shop windows reflect, play a nameless host to a closet ghost -
A picture of your fantasy, a victim of your misery…”

Paul Weller (singer) (1958) English singer-songwriter, Guitarist

Private Hell, from Setting Sons (1979)

Food, Coffee

“Home was a dream she’d had yesterday. A place where children used to play. Among towers near the mountains, by a river, on curving sweeps of white or golden sand beside a palace at the edge of the sea.”

Guy Gavriel Kay book Tigana

Source: Tigana (1990), Chapter 8 (p. 225)

Children, Dreams, Home, Mountain

“Mr. Speaker, in the brief time I have let me give you five reasons why I'm opposed to giving the President a blank check to launch a unilateral invasion and occupation of Iraq and why I will vote against this resolution.One: I have not heard any estimates of how many young American men and women might die in such a war, or how many tens of thousands of women and children in Iraq might also be killed. As a caring nation, we should do everything we can to prevent the horrible suffering that a war will cause. War must be the last recourse in international relations, not the first.Second, I am deeply concerned about the precedent that a unilateral invasion of Iraq could establish in terms of international law and the role of the United Nations. If President Bush believes that the US can go to war at any time against any nation, what moral or legal obligation can our government raise if another country chose to do the same thing.Third, the United States in now involved in a very difficult war against international terrorism, as we learned tragically on September eleventh. We are opposed by Osama Bin Ladin and religious fanatics who are prepared to engage in a kind of warfare that we have never experienced before. I agree with Brent Scowcroft, Republican former national security adviser for President George Bush senior, who stated and I quote, "An attack on Iraq at this time would seriously jeopardize if not destroy the global counter-terrorist campaign we have undertaken."Fourth, at a time when this country has a six-trillion dollar national debt and a growing deficit, we should be clear that a war and a long-term American occupation of Iraq could be extremely expensive.Fifth, I am concerned about the problems with so-called unintended consequences. Who will govern Iraq when Saddam Hussein is removed? And what role will the US play in an ensuing civil war that could develop in that country? Will moderate governments in the regions who have large Islamic fundamentalist populations be overthrown and replaced by extremists? Will the bloody conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Authority be exacerbated? And these are just a few of the questions that remain unanswered.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

Speech on Iraq War Resolution in US House of Representatives https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdFw1btbkLM (9 October 2002) 2000s

Women, Men, War, Children

“Communication becomes the defining characteristic of homo sapiens; we are the species that speaks. We utter the words that create our world, and have learned to take our words and translate them into the ethereal play of zeros and ones, lay them out, at the speed of light, first on a wire, then a radio wave, and lately, on a beam of light, so that the voice, once constrained by mouth and ear, now straddles the entire planet in thirty millionths of a second, messages pinging back and forth, not unlike the meeting points of a synaptic gap, using photons as neurotransmitters, and each network router the equivalent of a synapic junction, deciding whether to activate or extinguish each message that crosses the continents, connected now in a seamless, endless web of knowledge, more than two billion pages, more than any one of us could ever read or know, the collected and collective intelligence of a species that seems to have made information the central mystery of culture, the project of civilization, and the goal of being.”

Mark Pesce (1962) American writer

From the narration to Becoming Transhuman http://www.webearth.org/bt.pdf

World, Intelligence, Communication, Knowledge

“I think there are some objective [musical] qualities… how complex something is, how melodic, how diverse the tonality is, et cetera. But I could also make a piece of music that contains all of those and yet isn't "good" from a subjective viewpoint. For example, take Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata", Beatles "Yesterday", and Underworld's "Born Slippy", and play them all on top of each other at the same time. Great music in their own right, but terrible sounding together.”

Andrew Sega (1975) musician from America

Andrew Sega Shrine interview, 2011

Music, Thinking, Time

“I didn't like movies. You see, in a play you become the play, because you start in the beginning and end up at the end of the script. Movies, you do little bits and you don't know where it fits in. You just do a little bit here and a little bit there and you never see the whole thing, you can never act out the whole thing. It has no unity. I would advise anybody-a kid-instead of doing pictures, get experience! Do theater! Get theater in his blood!”

David Manners (1900–1998) Canadian-born American actor

Interview with David Manners, Scarlet Street #26 (1997)

“The game Flights of Fancy or Reverse Strip Jump is played from as high a jumping-point as a competitor will dare. After each successful jump, the competitor is allowing to put on an article of clothing. Thirteen jumps is normally more than enough to see a competitor fully dressed for the day.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Drowning By Numbers

Game, Success, Clothes

“Storms in the forest have a more primal character than storms playing over tamed urban land. A vigorous cloudburst is exhilarating, a burst of sensory delight with its leafy smells, gray light, and chill. But a full tree-ripping storm pushes the senses beyond exhilaration or thrill, into fear.”

David G. Haskell (1950) writer, Biologist

"November 21st — Twigs," page 218 The Forest Unseen: A Year's Watch in Nature http://theforestunseen.com/ (2012)

Fear, Sense, Tree, Light

“Do you remember at the presidential convention where they nominated Bush? Did you know what song they played to bring Bush on stage? No. “The Best of Times” from La Cage aux Folles. I said some fag pulled a fast one on them!”

Harvey Fierstein (1954) actor from the United States

This Is Not Going to Be Pretty, Live at the Bottom Line (1995)

Time

“We shall lodge at the sign of the Grave, you say;
Well, the road is a long one we trudge, my friend,
So why should we grieve at the break of the day?
Let us sing, let us drink, let us love, let us play,--
We can keep our sights for the journey's end.”

Percy Addleshaw (1866–1916) English journalist

Travellers (1895).

Love, Drink, Singing

“Game theory concepts were first explicitly applied in evolutionary biology by Lewontin (1961). His approach, however, was to picture a species as playing a game against nature, and to seek strategies which minimised the probability of extinction. A similar line has been taken by Slobodkin & Rapoport (1974). In contrast, here we picture members of a population as playing games against each other, and consider the population dynamics and equilibria which can arise.”

John Maynard Smith book Evolution and the Theory of Games

Source: Evolution and the Theory of Games (1973), p. 2.

Game, Nature

“Translation:I have spend a long time thinking, the arbitrators who holds the power calling others cheap, I don't see how elegant they are, for example, it is cheap to go for a $100 prostitute, but to spend one million on a show girl(singers or actress) is elegant, looking at porno is cheap, reading Red Head documents(all Communist documents have red color heading) is elegant, it is cheap to buy a replica gun, it is elegant to gun down two men in one go, it is cheap to play World of Warcraft, it is elegant to have sex with fashion models…”

Han Han (1982) Chinese writer and racing driver

From Han Han's blog: Beginning from today, I shall be a cheap man. 从今天起，做一个低俗的人 http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4701280b0100gnj4.html

Men, World, Sex, Color

“Wop boys rock my world
I like to play with all my girls
But money makes me hard and tight
I love to bathe in cash and pearls”

Erika Jayne (1969) American singer, actress and television personality

"Roller Coaster"
Song lyrics, Pretty Mess (2009)

Love, Money, World, Girl

“We cannot pretend that we do not see the armed policeman who marches up and down beneath our window to guarantee our security while we eat our luxurious dinner, or look at the new piece at the theater, or that we are unaware of the existence of the soldiers who will make their appearance with guns and cartridges directly our property is attacked.
We know very well that we are only allowed to go on eating our dinner, to finish seeing the new play, or to enjoy to the end the ball, the Christmas fete, the promenade, the races or, the hunt, thanks to the policeman's revolver or the soldier's rifle, which will shoot down the famished outcast who has been robbed of his share, and who looks round the corner with covetous eyes at our pleasures, ready to interrupt them instantly, were not policeman and soldier there prepared to run up at our first call for help.
And therefore just as a brigand caught in broad daylight in the act cannot persuade us that he did not lift his knife in order to rob his victim of his purse, and had no thought of killing him, we too, it would seem, cannot persuade ourselves or others that the soldiers and policemen around us are not to guard us, but only for defense against foreign foes, and to regulate traffic and fetes and reviews; we cannot persuade ourselves and others that we do not know that the men do not like dying of hunger, bereft of the right to gain their subsistence from the earth on which they live; that they do not like working underground, in the water, or in the stifling heat, for ten to fourteen hours a day, at night in factories to manufacture objects for our pleasure. One would imagine it impossible to deny what is so obvious. Yet it is denied.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Source: The Kingdom of God is Within You (1894), Chapter 12

Men, Hunger, Pleasure, Imagination

“This latest skirmish in the high art/low art war has played out most fiercely over Mr. Tidwell, who shocked balletomanes when he left American Ballet Theater in 2005, then added insult to injury by joining the third season of “So You Think You Can Dance.””

Danny Tidwell (1984) American dancer

The New York Times La Rocco Claudia. "TV Viewers Discover Dance, and the Debate Is Joined" http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/21/arts/dance/21revo.html?ref=dance#, The New York Times, September 21, 2007 About

War, Art, Thinking, Dance

“I'm really interested with the way light plays on images and one of the artists that really reawakened my interest in comic books was Frank Miller and his treatment of Daredevil, and then Wolverine and, of course, Batman.”

James Marsters (1962) American actor

Worlds Of Westfield James Marsters Interview (Feb '99) http://www.morethanspike.com/articles.php?ID=164

Books, Way, Light

“Not only was I fiddling around at the keyboard but there were all these other children of all backgrounds wanting to play every sort of music bits of classical, jazz, pop, improvisation.”

Joanna MacGregor (1959) British musician

The Guardian - 26/05/2000
Childhood

Children, Music

“I began studying philosophy and economics about the same time. The similarity of the two disciplines struck me at once. I found no difficulty in grasping the differences between the great philosophical systems as they were presented by our textbooks and our teachers. Economic theory was easier still. Indeed, I thought the successive systems of economics were rather crude affairs compared with the subtleties of the metaphysicians. Having run the gamut from Plato to T. H. Green (as undergraduates do) I felt the gamut from Quesnay to Marshall was a minor theme. The technical part of the theory was easy. Give me premises and I could spin speculations by the yard. Also I knew that my 'deductions' were futile…
Meanwhile I was finding something really interesting in philosophy and in economics. John Dewey was giving courses under all sorts of titles and every one of them dealt with the same problem — how we think… And, if one wanted to try his own hand at constructive theorizing, Dewey's notion pointed the way. It is a misconception to suppose that consumers guide their course by ratiocination—they don't think except under stress. There is no way of deducing from certain principles what they will do, just because their behavior is not itself rational. One has to find out what they do. That is a matter of observation, which the economic theorists had taken all too lightly. Economic theory became a fascinating subject—the orthodox types particularly — when one began to take the mental operations of the theorists as the problem…
Of course Veblen fitted perfectly into this set of notions. What drew me to him was his artistic side… There was a man who really could play with ideas! If one wanted to indulge in the game of spinning theories who could match his skill and humor? But if anything were needed to convince me that the standard procedure of orthodox economics could meet no scientific tests, it was that Veblen got nothing more certain by his dazzling performances with another set of premises…
William Hill set me a course paper on 'Wool Growing and the Tariff.”

Wesley Clair Mitchell (1874–1948) American statistician

I read a lot of the tariff speeches and got a new sidelight on the uses to which economic theory is adapted, and the ease with which it is brushed aside on occasion. Also I wanted to find out what really had happened to wool growers as a result of protection. The obvious thing to do was to collect and analyze the statistical data... That was my first 'investigation'.
Wesley Clair Mitchell in letter to John Maurice Clark, August 9, 1928. Originally printed in Methods in Social Science, ed. Stuart Rice; Cited in: Arthur F. Burns (1965, 65-66)

Way, Behavior, Game, Idea

“It was reported that Guy Ritchie has cast his wife Madonna in a small walk-on role in his new movie, Revolver. Madonna will play the part of the woman who ruins the film.”

Tina Fey (1970) American comedian, writer, producer and actress

citation needed

Guy, Parting

“I now began for the first time to envy those young cubs at the university who had fine scholars to tell them what was what; professors who had devoted their lives to mastering and focusing ideas in every branch of learning; who were eager to distribute the treasures they had gathered before they were overtaken by the night. But now I pity undergraduates, when I see what frivolous lives many of them lead in the midst of precious fleeting opportunity. After all, a man’s Life must be nailed to a cross either of Thought or Action. Without work there is no play.”

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

Source: My Early Life: A Roving Commission (1930), Chapter 9 (Education At Bangalore).

Life, Idea, Learning, Universe

“Anything was better than playing cards, and I was doing something I wanted to do — creating.”

Mary Martin (1913–1990) American actress

On becoming a dance teacher, and creating her own moves, p. 44
My Heart Belongs (1976)

“I never expected to play lead roles! Primarily, because I was not the conventional good looking hero, and in fact, I used to feel I’ll never look as good as Rajesh Khanna. Why the hell am I going into it? Now that we are being frank and talking our hearts out, I’d like to say that I still remember a photograph of Kaka's which came in Filmfare and I thought ‘yaar, ye aadmi kya khaata hain? Iske gaal itne lal kaise hain?”

Amitabh Bachchan (1942) Indian actor

Quotable quotes by Amitabh Bachchan.

Feeling, Hell, Heart

“I've played every beer joint tavern from New York City out to Pasadena
Every corn dog fair and rodeo
And sold out every basketball arena
I like to get down with my boys in Afghanistan and Baghdad city too
I am a red, white and blue blood graduate of Honkytonk U.”

Toby Keith (1961) American country music singer and actor

Honkytonk U.
Song lyrics, Honkytonk University (2005)

Dogs, Boy, Beer

“At present, I am particularly excited by 'bad taste'. I have the deep feeling that there exists in the very essence of bad taste a power capable of creating those things situated far beyond what is traditionally termed 'The Work of Art'. I wish to play with human feeling, with its 'morbidity' in a cold and ferocious manner. Only very recently I have become a sort of gravedigger of art (oddly enough, I am using the very terms of my enemies). Some of my latest works have been coffins and tombs. During the same time I succeeded in painting with fire, using particularly powerful and searing gas flames, some of them measuring three to four meters high. I use these to bathe the surface of the painting in such a way that it registered the spontaneous trace of fire.”

Yves Klein (1928–1962) French artist

Quote from Klein's 'Chelsea Hotel Manifesto', 1961; from the Yves Klein Archives - archived from the original on 15 January 2013; as cited on Wikipedia: Yves Klein
After the opening of his unsuccesful exhibition at Leo Castelli's Gallery, New York 1961, Klein stayed with Rotraut Uecker (fr) at the Chelsea Hotel for the duration of the exhibition. While there, he wrote the 'Chelsea Hotel Manifesto', a proclamation of the 'multiplicity of new possibilities'
1960 -1964

Art, Way, Feeling, Time

“During the nine years that Calcutta was my home, I lived a life which would now be seen as thoroughly politically incorrect. From our youngest days, we were never allowed to forget that we were different - we were English, not Indian. We had an English nanny who saw to that. She supervised us 24x7 and once, finding me learning to count from our driver, she cuffed my head, saying "that's the servants' language, not yours". Inevitably, we were not allowed to play with Indian children. There were even class barriers to the European children we were allowed to play with. My nanny would not allow us to play with children who only had Indian or Anglo-Indian nannies because their parents couldn't afford a "proper nanny", as she saw herself. European society in the Calcutta of those days was divided by a strict class system, not dissimilar to the caste system. Members of the ICS, were considered the Brahmins (the elite caste), while the members of the Indian army were regarded as the Rajputs (the warrior caste). As a businessman, my father was a Vaisya (trading caste), dismissed by the snooty ICS and army as a mere "boxwallah".”

Mark Tully (1935) British journalist

Why Mark Tully needs a Calcutta birth certificate at 78, 2013

Life, Children, Home, Parent

“Yeah, the good news about the move to abolish the death tax, the tax where they come and look at how much money you've got when you die, how much gold is in your teeth and they want half of it, is that — you're right, there's an exemption for — I don't know — maybe a million dollars now, and it's scheduled to go up a little bit. However, 70 percent of the American people want to abolish that tax. Congress, the House and Senate, have three times voted to abolish it. The president supports abolishing it, so that tax is going to be abolished. I think it speaks very much to the health of the nation that 70-plus percent of Americans want to abolish the death tax, because they see it as fundamentally unjust. The argument that some who played at the politics of hate and envy and class division will say, 'Yes, well, that's only 2 percent,' or as people get richer 5 percent in the near future of Americans likely to have to pay that tax. I mean, that's the morality of the Holocaust. 'Well, it's only a small percentage,' you know. 'I mean, it's not you, it's somebody else.' And this country, people who may not make earning a lot of money the centerpiece of their lives, they may have other things to focus on, they just say it's not just. If you've paid taxes on your income once, the government should leave you alone. Shouldn't come back and try and tax you again.”

Grover Norquist (1956) Conservative Lobbyist

interview with NPR's Terry Gross on the program Fresh Air, October 2, 2003.
2003

Death, Money, Hate, People

“I must be absolutely clear about this. Britain cannot accept the present situation on the Budget. It is demonstrably unjust. It is politically indefensible: I cannot play Sister Bountiful to the Community while my own electorate are being asked to forego improvements in the fields of health, education, welfare and the rest.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Winston Churchill Memorial Lecture (18 October 1979) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104149 regarding the UK's contribution to the European Community budget. First term as Prime Minister

Health, Education, Communication, Sister

“No father wants to come home and find his son playing with a doll because of the influence of his school.”

Jair Bolsonaro (1955) Brazilian president elect

Inteview http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/poder/2017/11/1936715-se-nao-houver-fraude-estarei-no-2-turno-diz-bolsonaro.shtml to the program Canal Livre on Band on 19 November 2017. A Trump-like politician in Brazil could snag the support of a powerful religious group: evangelicals https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2017/11/28/a-trump-like-politician-in-brazil-could-snag-the-support-of-a-powerful-religious-group-evangelicals/?utm_term=.d388f991eceb. The Washington Post (28 November 2017).

School, Home

“I swear I have never told a player to attack another player. In fact, I have told my players if they ever hear me saying something like this, they can break a stick over my skull. I ask only that they play aggressively.”

Fred Shero (1925–1990) Former ice hockey player and coach

HHOF Time Capsule - The 70s - Great Teams - Philadelphia Flyers - 1973-74 to 1975-76, Hockey Hall of Fame, 2009-05-27 http://www.hhof.com/html/t7gt04.shtml,

“What is found in biology is mechanisms, mechanisms built with chemical components and that are often modified by other, later, mechanisms added to the earlier ones. While Occam's razor is a useful tool in the physical sciences, it can be a very dangerous implement in biology. It is thus very rash to use simplicity and elegance as a guide in biological research. While DNA could be claimed to be both simple and elegant, it must be remembered that DNA almost certainly originated fairly close to the origin of life when things were necessarily simple or they would not have got going.
Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved. It might be thought, therefore, that evolutionary arguments would play a large part in guiding biological research, but this is far from the case. It is difficult enough to study what is happening now. To figure out exactly what happened in evolution is even more difficult. Thus evolutionary achievements can be used as hints to suggest possible lines of research, but it is highly dangerous to trust them too much. It is all too easy to make mistaken inferences unless the process involved is already very well understood.”

Francis Crick (1916–2004) British molecular biologist, biophysicist, neuroscientist; co-discoverer of the structure of DNA

What Mad Pursuit (1988)

Life, Study, Science, Parting

“I'd play the piano at 5am.”

Lang Lang (1982) Chinese pianist

theguardian.com http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2011/may/14/lang-lang-piano-china-father

“He had come to power because he had seen through Hitler from the very beginning- but not, ironically, because his inner light, the source of that insight, was understood by Englishmen. Churchill's star was invisible to the public and even to most of his peers. But a few saw it. One of them wrote afterward that although Winston knew the world was complex and in constant flux, to him "the great things, races, and peoples, and morality were eternal." Isaiah Berlin, the Oxford philosopher, later observed that the Churchill of 1940 was neither "a sensitive lens, which absorbs and concentrates and reflects… the sentiments of others," nor a politician who played "on public opinion like an instrument." Instead Berlin saw him as a leader who imposed his "imagination and his will upon his countrymen," idealizing them "with such intensity that in the end they approached his ideal and began to see themselves as he saw them."”

William Manchester (1922–2004) (April 1, 1922 – June 1, 2004) American author, journalist and historian

In doing so he "transformed cowards into brave men, and so fulfilled the purpose of shining armour."
Source: 1980s, The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Alone 1932-1940 (1988), p. 687

Men, People, World, Imagination

“But such meanness can incite you to achieve great things. I take insults - insults to my physical being, to my mental being, to my pride - very deeply. I can't shake them off! I bear these insults to my sense of fair play and justice to this day. It's almost an inextinguishable flame, which is why I make a very bad enemy. I just felt "I want to show you. I will show you." From early on, I developed this strong anger which, in many ways, propelled me forward in life.”

Robert Kuok (1923) Malaysian businessman

Cap 1 "Moulded by Mother"

Life, Justice, Way, Sense

“Senators leap up and bray for the Death Penalty with inflexible authority of virus yen… Death for dope fiends, death for sex queens (I mean friends) death for the psychopath who offends the cowed and graceless flesh with broken animal innocence of lithe movements. The black wind of death undulates over the land, feeling, smelling for the crime of separate life, movers of the fear-frozen flesh shivering under a vast probability curve… Populations blocks disappear in a checker game of genocide… Any number can play…”

William S. Burroughs book Naked Lunch

Atrophied Preface
Naked Lunch (1959)

Life, Death, Fear, Penalty

“I'm not a Baptist in any formal way. I go to the Baptist church, where my wife plays the piano, on days of bad weather. On days of good weather, I ramble off into the woods somewhere. I am a person who takes the Gospel seriously, but I have had trouble conforming my thoughts to a denomination.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

The Brian Lehrer Show (17 October 2013) http://www.wnyc.org/story/wendell-berry/

Way, Personality, Weather

“I often used to sit and view the moon for a long time; and in the day spent much time in viewing the clouds and sky, to behold the sweet glory of God in these things: in the mean time, singing forth, with a low voice, my contemplations of the Creator and Redeemer. And scarce any thing, among all the works of nature, was so sweet to me as thunder and lightning; formerly nothing had been so terrible to me. Before, I used to be uncommonly terrified with thunder, and to be struck with terror when I saw a thunder-storm rising; but now, on the contrary, it rejoiced me. I felt God, if I may so speak, at the first appearance of a thunderstorm; and used to take the opportunity, at such times, to fix myself in order to view the clouds, and see the lightnings play, and hear the majestic and awful voice of God's thunder, which oftentimes was exceedingly entertaining, leading me to sweet contemplations of my great and glorious God. While thus engaged, it always seemed natural for me to sing, or chant forth my meditations; or to speak my thoughts in soliloquies with a singing voice.”

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) Christian preacher, philosopher, and theologian

"Personal Narrative" (1739), from The Works of President Edwards (1830) Vol. I, edited by Sereno B. Dwight.

God, Nature, Appearance, Singing

“People call my music complex because I will have instruments playing at their own paces, as if the other instruments weren't even there. It doesn't march along in the same way that most older music does. But to me, I honestly don't think that a work like Debussy's La Mer is any less complex than my work. It's full of all sorts of sounds and textures going on at once, yet we still look at is as beautiful, structured and fluid. That's all I'm trying to do; I'm not out to compose for complexity's sake.”

Elliott Carter (1908–2012) American composer

From American Gothic: An Interview with Elliott Carter http://edwebproject.org/carter.html (1993) by Andy Carvin.

People, Beauty, Music, Way

“Incredibly, Apple has persuaded Disney, which owns ABC, to make available all episodes of five TV series, including "Lost," "Desperate Housewives" and "That's So Raven." Each show costs $1.99 — an easy impulse buy if you missed an episode. They play back beautifully, with no network logo in the corner, no yearlong wait for the DVD, and no commercials. (One 43-minute "hour" of TV takes 12 minutes to download with my cable modem, and about two minutes to transfer to the iPod over its U. S. B. 2.0 cable.)… That Mr. Jobs persuaded Disney to dip its pinky toe into these waters is an impressive development — and a very promising sign.”

David Pogue (1963) Technology writer, journalist and commentator

" An iPod Worth Keeping an Eye On http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/18/technology/circuits/19web-pogue.html," The New York Times, October 18, 2005.

Water, Waiting

“I am going to seek a grand perhaps; draw the curtain, the farce is played.”

Francois Rabelais (1494–1553) major French Renaissance writer

Je m'en vais chercher un grand peut-être; tirez le rideau, la farce est jouée.
Last words, according to the Life of Rabelais (1694) by Peter Anthony Motteux.
Variant translations:
I am going to seek the great perhaps.
I am going to search for the great perhaps.

Drawing

“Ignorance plays the chief part among men, and the multitude of words.”

Diogenes Laërtius (180–240) biographer of ancient Greek philosophers

Cleobulus, 4.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 1: The Seven Sages

Men, Parting

“I’ve learned from these events that self-esteem plays as much a part in the destiny of nations as it does in the lives of individuals; that self-hatred leads to the need either to dominate or to be dominated; that citizens who refuse to obey anything but their own conscience can transform their countries; in short, that self-esteem is the basis of any real democracy.”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

Revolution From Within

Democracy, Learning, Parting, Country

“I’m very skeptical in approaching Bach as a clean slate. To understand Bach, one has to be at home in the whole literature of art and interpretation; one must have great experience in performing the complete literature, from Bach until the early avantgarde. I’m absolutely convinced that only by this deep knowledge one can feel the all-embracing range of effects that are compressed in Bach and his music - and how later generations have been inspired. Only by this experience you can give the Bach interpretation a new balance and tension. In the case of the Goldberg Variations we are confronted with these all-emotional effects, and I’m also skeptical whether this all-embracing range can be touched by much too young players, on harpsichord as well as on piano. Knowing the true worth of this condensed and nearly welded-in polyphonic structure and singular musical architecture, one ultimately knows that it is impossible to play with the variations, meaning to change voices, or make doublings. Then the music itself would be robbed of its true worth and sense, which can only be revealed by bringing out the embedded simplicity, which however is transformed to an electrified, heated atmosphere. One has to respect the internal strength.”

Burkard Schliessmann classical pianist

Talkings on Bach

Art, Music, Feeling, Home

“Kierkegaard said that the only way we can be released from the enchantment, the siren song of the myths, is to play the music through backwards. To break the spell of the ego I must recover my personal and political history, I must demythologize the private, family, and public myths that have informed me.”

Sam Keen (1931) author, professor, and philosopher

Source: The Passionate Life (1983), p. 140

Family, Music, Way, History

“I want to warn young people who lend their ears to radicals and who play around with the music from Lusaka - they will end up inside the bear's fur coat, but they will no longer be able to live.”

P. W. Botha (1916–2006) South African prime minister

At an election meeting in Pietermaritzburg on 30 April 1987, as cited by Andrew Donaldson, Sunday Times, 5 November 2006

People, Music

“Two developments of the past four decades played crucial roles in establishing a research agenda for the study of map symbolization and design. The first was Arthur H. Robinson's dissertation (published as The Look of Maps in 1952), with its call for objective research, and the second was the adoption in the 1970s of a paradigm of cartography as communication science.”

Alan MacEachren (1952) American geographer

Source: How Maps Work: Representation, Visualization, and Design (1995), p. 2

Communication, Study, Science, Past

“The ability… to experiment with imaginary situations, gives man a freedom… the pleasure in trying out and exploring imaginary situations. A child's play is concerned with this pleasure; and so is much of art, and much of science… [P]ure science… is a form of play, in this sense.”

Jacob Bronowski (1908–1974) Polish-born British mathematician

"The Imaginative Mind in Art" (1978)

Pleasure, Art, Sense, Freedom

“When asked what part did Alice in Chains played in his life during his solo career.”

Jerry Cantrell (1966) American musician and songwriter

https://web.archive.org/web/20120306231057/http://www.adbdesign.com/aic/articles/art088.html, Taking a Solo Trip, Metal-is.com, May 14, 2001
On Alice in Chains

Life, Parting

“(When asked who the three finest old time guitarists were) Well, I would have to pick Travis, you know; I think he's a great man with his music, and there's been many a man that's copied from Merle. You know, they say he learned from a man in Kentucky. Well, I know this Mose Rager he learned from, he learned from Arnold Shultz, the man I speak of, a colored man, in playing the blues. So I think it all leads back to this old colored man back in Kentucky.”

Bill Monroe (1911–1996) American bluegrass musician

Music, Color, Thinking, Learning

“Roger: Yeah “Does the Lion City Still Roar?” Actually I saw it on Fuse today, it was awesome. Steven played it today. Download that bad boy.”

Roger Manganelli (1973) American musician

Boy

“The Republicans… are having a hard time getting their members to act as a unit instead of like a bunch of six-year-olds playing anarchist soccer; three teams, two goals, you decide.”

Rachel Maddow (1973) American journalist

The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC (February 16, 2011)

Time

“I make music all the time that no-one ever hears. Y' know, I sing in the shower, I hit on things. Music is life - life is music. Of all people, Nietzsche said 'Life without music is an error'. And so I'll be making music one way or another. Oh believe me, I make music.. I've made whole records that no-one heard. Oh they came out, no-one bought them! We used to do whole secret tours, we used to stand outside like 'We're playing tonight!”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

and only the bouncers and bartenders would see you. I'm used to it. I'm that tree that falls in the forest. Clip for Studio4a http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6SuvanvZFY&feature=related at youtube.com

Life, People, Secret, Music

“I'll tell you one thing: I will always play the sh** out of my guitar.”

Joe Satriani (1956) American guitar player

As quoted in "Shred on Arrival" in Guitar World (November 1993).

“Within profound Silence, erect, fearless, in pain and in play, ascending ceaselessly from peak to peak, knowing that the height has no ending, sing this proud and magical incantation as you hang over the Abyss:
I BELIEVE IN ONE GOD, DEFENDER OF THE BORDERS, OF DOUBLE DESCENT, MILITANT, SUFFERING, OF MIGHTY BUT NOT OF OMNIPOTENT POWERS, A WARRIOR AT THE FARTHEST FRONTIERS, COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF OF ALL THE LUMINOUS POWERS, THE VISIBLE AND THE INVISIBLE.
I BELIEVE IN THE INNUMERABLE, THE EPHEMERAL MASKS WHICH GOD HAS ASSUMED THROUGHOUT THE CENTURIES, AND BEHIND HIS CEASELESS FLUX I DISCERN AN INDESTRUCTIBLE UNITY.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book The Saviors of God

The Saviors of God (1923)

God, Pain, Silence, Suffering

“I remember I felt an extraordinary persuasion that I was being played with, that presently, when I was upon the very verge of safety, this mysterious death--as swift as the passage of light--would leap after me from the pit about the cylinder and strike me down.”

H. G. Wells book The War of the Worlds

Book I, Ch. 5: The Heat-Ray
The War of the Worlds (1898)

Death, Light

“We are in the world and, before we know where we are, we are on one of the paths which we must traverse in our few score years between birth and death. Moreover, each man's path leads up to the theatre on the one side and down from it on the other. The inexorable manager, Fate, requires that each should go through with his comedy or his drama, if he be judged worthy of a leading part, with his scene or his act in another man's piece, if he be fit only to play the walking gentleman, the dumb footman, or the mechanically trained supernumerary who does duty by turns as soldier, sailor, courtier, husbandman, conspirator or red-capped patriot. A few play well, many play badly, all must appear and the majority are feebly applauded and loudly hissed. He counts himself great who is received with such an uproar of clapping and shout of approval as may drown the voice of the discontented; he is called fortunate who, having missed his cue and broken down in his words, makes his exit in the triumphant train of the greater actor upon whom all eyes are turned; he is deemed happy who, having offended no man, is allowed to depart in peace upon his downward road.”

Francis Marion Crawford (1854–1909) Novelist, short story writer, essayist (1854-1909)

A Cigarette-Maker's Romance (1894)

Death, Fate, Happiness, World

“The artificial intelligence people, the artificial intelligencia,… kept choosing little games to play, and little things that they could master, right? But my whole philosophy has always been give me a really tough problem that's just beyond the state-of-the-art, and give me a whole bunch of users beating on me to get it done. In other words, the real core of what being an engineer is.”

Douglas T. Ross (1929–2007) American computer scientist

Source: An Interview with Douglas T. Ross (1989), p. 24-25.

People, Art, Game, Intelligence

“The universality of card-playing in the reign of this monarch is evident from a prohibitory statute being necessary to prevent apprentices from using cards except in the Christmas holidays, and then only in their masters' houses…But this moderation, I apprehend, was by no means general, for several contemporary writers are exceedingly severe in their reflections upon the usage of cards, which they rank with dice, and consider both as destructive to morality and good order.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 327
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Cards

Universe, Holiday, Christmas, Housing

“But we, insofar as we have power over the world and over one another, we must learn to do what the leaf and the whale and the wind do of their own nature. We must learn to keep the balance. Having intelligence, we must not act in ignorance. Having choice, we must not act without responsibility. Who am I—though I have the power to do it—to punish and reward, playing with men’s destinies?”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

Source: Earthsea Books, The Farthest Shore (1972), Chapter 4, "Magelight" (Ged)

Men, World, Intelligence, Nature

“Come, swift-wing'd Fancy, airy maid,
In varied, dazzling vest array'd,
Inspire thy vot'ry's lay;
Grant me thy flow'ry walks to tread,
To range thy summer-painted mead,
Or near thy fountain play.
Now led by thy resistless hand,
Or guided by thy fairy wand,
O'er yet untrodden space;
Or on thy pinions borne along,
The bright Ideas' flitting throngs
Pursue th' aerial race.”

Elizabeth Bentley (writer) (1767–1839) British writer

Ode to Fancy (1790), from Genuine Poetical Compositions, on Various Subjects (1791)

Idea, Summer, Painting

“And you remember, Rabbi Wise has declared, in a heated moment, that our plays seem to be written for the hosiery buyers. If Dr. Wise had only witnessed our new summer reviews, he doubtless would have amended his statement to read “by the hosiery buyers.””

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Source: Dorothy Parker: Complete Broadway, 1918–1923 (2014) https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25758762M/Dorothy_Parker_Complete_Broadway_1918-1923, Chapter 2: 1919, p.89

Reading, Summer

“I liked to go at night when I thought there was a better chance of finding a fight. I was always looking for a fight. I had not known I was capable of such rage. I knew I had been cheated of a future, but I felt I'd been cheated of a past, too. The underpinnings of my life had been kicked out from under me… and it wasn't just the loss of Neilia and Naomi. All my life I'd been taught about our benevolent God. This is a forgiving God, a just God, a God who knows people make mistakes. This is a God who is tolerant. This is a God who gave us free will to be able to doubt. This was a loving God, a God of comfort. Well, I didn't want to hear anything about a merciful God. No words, no prayer, no sermon gave me ease. I felt God had played a horrible trick on me, and I was angry. I found no comfort in the Church. So I kept walking the dark streets to try to exhaust the rage.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

Page 81
2000s, Promises to Keep (2008)

Love, Life, God, People

“Occasionally, there arises a writing situation where you see an alternative to what you are doing, a mad, wild gamble of a way for handling something, which may leave you looking stupid, ridiculous or brilliant — you just don't know which. You can play it safe there, too, and proceed along the route you'd mapped out for yourself. Or you can trust your personal demon who delivered that crazy idea in the first place.
Trust your demon.”

Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) American speculative fiction writer

Introduction to Passion Play (1962)

Stupidity, Way, Idea, Personality

“Will you make us laugh, will you make us cry?
Will you tell us when to live; will you tell us when to die?
I know we've come a long way,
We're changing day to day,
But tell me, where do the children play?”

Cat Stevens (1948) British singer-songwriter

Where Do the Children Play?
Song lyrics, Tea for the Tillerman (1970)

Children, Way, Change, Cry

“Few novels or plays could exist without at least one troublemaker in the group, and perhaps life couldn’t either.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Theater

Life

“When all is done, human life is, at the greatest, and the best, but like a froward child, that must be played with and humored a little to keep it quiet till it falls asleep, and then the care is over.”

William Temple (1881–1944) Archbishop of Canterbury

Miscellanea (4th ed. pub. 1705), Part II, "Of Poetry".

Life

“My secret desire is for the whole world to eventually play games and for games to have the kind of influence that books and movies do. Games are a great place for the planet's collective subconscious to grow as we further our understanding of each other.”

Jeremy Soule (1975) American composer

Jeremy Soule Interview https://web.archive.org/web/20021026151734/http://www.stratosgroup.com/features/interviews.php?selected=200206jsbh (June 04, 2002). Attributed

Secret, Books, World, Game

“She said he was a man who cheated.
He said she didn't play the game.
She said an expletive deleted.
He said the undeleted same.
And so they ended their relation
With meaningful communication.”

J. V. Cunningham (1911–1985) American writer

"Jack and Jill", 1981
The Poems of J. V. Cunningham, edited by Timothy Steele, Ohio University Press/Swallow Press, 1997, ISBN 0-804-00997-X
Other poetry

Game, Communication, Cheating

“I know I can still play, but it's like I told my wife, I'm just tired mentally. I'm just tired”

Brett Favre (1969) former American football quarterback

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=3276034

“I am happy at Newcastle. I love the city and the people. Our fans are the best in the world. Even if we are losing or not playing well there are still 52,000 backing us and I respect that.”

Obafemi Martins (1984) Nigerian footballer

On life at Newcastle. [April 22, 2007, http://home.skysports.com/list.aspx?hlid=462540&CPID=8&clid=4&lid=3&title=Martins:+Best+is+yet+to+come, Martins: Best is yet to come, Sky Sports, 2007-04-22]

Love, Happiness, People, World

Quotes about play page 19

Quotes about play
page 19