Quotes about play
page 3

“The finest actor is he who play the comedy of life perfectly, as i aspire to do. To walk well, talk well, weep well, laugh well and die well, it is all pure acting, because in every man there is the dumb dreadful immortal spirit who is real- who cannot act, who-is and who steadily maintains an infinite though speechless protest against the body's lies”

Marie Corelli (1855–1924) British writer

Source: The Sorrows of Satan or The Strange Experience of One Geoffrey Tempest, Millionaire

Life

“Since Stark had come back from the Otherworld, he'd been too weak and out of it to do much more than eat, sleep, and play computer games with Seoras, which was actually a super weird sight, it was like high school meets Braveheart meets Call of Duty.”

P. C. Cast book Awakened

Source: Awakened

School, Game, Sleep

“A second floor window opened, and Kyle stuck his head and shoulders out so he could look down at us. “If you two are finished playing Cowboy and Indian out there, some of us would like to get their beauty sleep.”

I looked at Warren. “You heard ‘um Kemo Sabe. Me go to my little wigwam and get ‘um shut-eye.”

“How come you always get to play the Indian?” whined Warren, deadpan.

“Cause she’s the Indian, white boy,” said Kyle.”

Patricia Briggs book Iron Kissed

Source: Iron Kissed

Beauty, Boy, Sleep

“When you play, play hard; when you work, don't play at all.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

“There's an old saying that applies to me: you can't lose a game if you don't play the game. (Act 1, scene 4)”

William Shakespeare book Romeo and Juliet

Source: Romeo and Juliet

Game

“She had read a wonderful play about a man who scratched on the wall of his cell and she had felt that was true of life — one scratched on the wall.”

Virginia Woolf book Mrs Dalloway

Source: Mrs. Dalloway

Life, Reading

“Rumour is a pipe
Blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures
And of so easy and so plain a stop
That the blunt monster with uncounted heads,
The still-discordant wavering multitude,
Can play upon it.”

William Shakespeare Henry IV, Part 2

Source: Henry IV, Part 2

Jealousy

“You can't just avoid the game by saying you don't want to play.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Final Empire

Game

“The moral nihilism of celebrity culture is played out on reality television shows, most of which encourage a dark voyeurism into other people's humiliation, pain, weakness, and betrayal.”

Chris Hedges (1956) American journalist

Source: Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle

Pain, People, Reality, Betrayal

“work. play. passion.”

Jim Clark (1936–1968) British racecar driver

Source: Making Friends with Candy

Passion

“Strength is paradoxical. I am not strong because I can force others to do what I wish as a result of my play with them, but because I can allow them to do what they wish in the course of my play with them.”

James P. Carse American academic

Source: Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility

Strong

“After you've seen behind the facade of a stage set you can't take the play seriously any more. You can't go backwards and regain your ignorance; you have to move forward.”

Zeena Schreck (1963) Tantric Buddhist/Sethian

“Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the
fool no where but in's own house.”

William Shakespeare Hamlet

Source: Hamlet

Fools, Housing

“If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it; that surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.”

William Shakespeare Twelfth Night

Source: Twelfth Night

Love, Food, Music, Romantic

“The time you quit learning is the time to quit playing.”

Louis Sachar (1954) American writer of children's books

Source: The Cardturner: A Novel about a King, a Queen, and a Joker

Learning, Time

“The little cares that fretted me,
I lost them yesterday
Among the fields above the sea,
Among the winds at play.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) English poet, author

Sea

“It is utterly false and cruelly arbitrary… to put all the play and learning into childhood, all the work into middle age, and all the regrets into old age.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

As quoted in Teacher's Treasury of Stories for Every Occasion (1958) by Millard Dale Baughman, p. 69
1950s

Age, Learning, Childhood, Falseness

“Life is like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you is determinism; the way you play it is free will.”

Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964) Indian lawyer, statesman, and writer, first Prime Minister of India

Life, Way, Game

“If you've been playing poker for half an hour and you still don't know who the patsy is, you're the patsy.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

“Lady Madonna lying on the bed
Listen to the music playing in your head.”

Paul McCartney (1942) English singer-songwriter and composer

Music, Lying

“I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano, A stage where every man must play a part, And mine a sad one.”

William Shakespeare The Merchant of Venice

Source: The Merchant of Venice

World, Sadness, Parting

“To create, I destroyed myself; I made myself external to such a degree within myself that within myself I do not exist except in an external fashion. I am the living setting in which several actors make entrances, putting on several different plays.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Source: The Book of Disquiet

Fashion

“You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

An abbreviated version of a quote by California politician Dianne Feinstein, from an interview with Cosmopolitan magazine in October 1985 https://books.google.com/books?id=zmxNAQAAIAAJ&dq=You+have+to+learn+the+rules+of+the+game+and+then+you+have+to+play+better+than+anyone+else&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=%22rules+of+the+game%22, on the topic of women running for public office. The original was: "... I really do have staying power. That's important for women who run for office. When you get in there and push for a lot of new things all at once and don't get them, you don't just leave. You have to commit, be a team player, learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play it better than anyone else." <br class="br">Misattributed

Game, Learning, Deep, Success

“Each of us has a unique part to play in the healing of the world.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

The Law of Divine Compensation: On Work, Money, and Miracles (2012)
Source: The Law of Divine Compensation: Mastering the Metaphysics of Abundance

World, Parting

“The Play's the Thing, wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King.”

William Shakespeare Hamlet

Source: Hamlet

“Not only does God play dice but… he sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

God

“Hermes played a little Mozart and some One Direction, and Apollo cried, ‘I must have it! The girls will go wild for that!”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

Source: Percy Jackson's Greek Gods

Girl

“It may be that until now there has been no more potent means for beautifying man himself than piety: it can turn man into so much art, surface, play of colors, graciousness that his sight no longer makes one suffer.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Beyond Good and Evil

Source: Beyond Good and Evil

Art, Color, Suffering

“And then there is the universal role of adult. When you play that role, you take yourself and life very seriously. Spontaneity, lightheartedness, and joy are not part of that role.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

Life, Universe, Joy, Parting

“It is sound judgment to put on a bold face and play your hand for a hundred times what it is worth; forty-nine times out of fifty nobody dares to call it, and you roll in the chips.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Time

“Thou seest we are not all alone unhappy:
This wide and universal theatre
Presents more woeful pageants than the scene
Wherein we play in.”

William Shakespeare As You Like It

Source: As You Like It

Universe

“And thus I clothe my naked villainy
With odd old ends stol'n out of holy writ;
And seem a saint, when most I play the devil.”

William Shakespeare Richard III

Source: Richard III

Clothes

“Society is like this card game here, cousin. We got dealt our hand before we were even born, and as we grow we have to play as best as we can.”

Louise Erdrich book Love Medicine

Source: Love Medicine

Game

“Life is a game with many rules but no referee. One learns how to play it more by watching it than by consulting any book, including the holy book. Small wonder, then, that so many play dirty, that so few win, that so many lose.”

Joseph Brodsky (1940–1996) Russian and American poet and Nobel Prize for Literature laureate

Life, Books, Game, Learning

“I don't play accurately--any one can play accurately--but I play with wonderful expression. As far as the piano is concerned, sentiment is my forte. I keep science for Life.”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Source: The Importance of Being Earnest

Life, Science

“I took the easy way, and to an extent I regret that. Still, though, the way we did it was honest. We played it and sang it the way we felt it, and there's a lot to be said for that.”

Johnny Cash (1932–2003) American singer-songwriter

Source: Cash

Way

“The creative mind plays with the object it loves.”

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

Love

“All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.”

William Shakespeare As You Like It

Jaques, Act II, scene vii.
Variant: All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts.
Source: As You Like It (1599–1600)

Women, Men, Age, World

“Young man, the games we play are lessons we learn. The assumptions we make, things we ignore, and things we change make us what we become.”

Terry Pratchett book Dodger

Source: Dodger

Game, Learning, Change

“Without this playing with fantasy, no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of the imagination is incalculable.”

C.G. Jung book Psychological Types

Source: Psychological Types, or, The Psychology of Individuation (1921), Ch. 1, p. 82
Context: The dynamic principle of fantasy is play, a characteristic also of the child, and as such it appears inconsistent with the principle of serious work. But without this playing with fantasy no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable. It is therefore short-sighted to treat fantasy, on account of its risky or unacceptable nature, as a thing of little worth.

Imagination, Birth

“Do you know what happens when you play a country song backwards? You get your wife back, your dog back and your job back.”

Richard Belzer (1944) American actor and comedian

Dogs, Country

“A wise man can play the part of a clown, but a clown can't play the part of a wise man.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

Parting

“There is a man, playing a violin, and the strings are the nerves in his own arm…”

James O'Barr (1960) Artist

“Don't ask me silly questions
I won't play silly games
I'm just a simple choo choo train
And I'll always be the same.

I only want to race along
Beneath the bright blue sky
And be a happy choo choo train
Until the day I die.”

Stephen King book The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands

Source: The Waste Lands

Happiness, Game, Question, Training

“From bitter searching of the heart,
quickened with passion and with pain
we rise
to play a greater part
this is the faith from which we start.”

Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter

Pain, Faith, Search, Passion

“Of course, it is very important to be sober when you take an exam. Many worthwhile careers in the street-cleansing, fruit-picking and subway-guitar-playing industries have been founded on a lack of understanding of this simple fact.”

Terry Pratchett book Moving Pictures

Source: Moving Pictures

Understanding

“Man's maturity: to have regained the seriousness that he had as a child at play.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Beyond Good and Evil

Variant: The maturity of man—that means, to have reacquired the seriousness that one had as a child at play
Source: Beyond Good and Evil

“If one plays good music, people don't listen, and if one plays bad music people don't talk.”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Algernon, Act I.
Source: The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)
Context: Of course the music is a great difficulty. You see, if one plays good music, people don't listen, and if one plays bad music people don't talk.

People, Music

“I shall have poetry in my life. And adventure. And love, love, love, above all. Love as there has never been in a play. Unbiddable, ungovernable, like a riot in the heart and nothing to be done, come ruin or rapture.”

Tom Stoppard (1937) British playwright

Love, Life, Heart

“I talk of you:
Why did you wish me milder? would you have me
False to my nature? Rather say I play
The man I am.”

William Shakespeare Coriolanus

Source: Coriolanus

Nature, Falseness

“Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.”

Ralph Ellison book Invisible Man

Source: Invisible Man

Life, Wise, Deep, Inspirational

“If all the year were playing holidays; To sport would be as tedious as to work.”

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) English playwright and poet

Source: King Henry IV, Part 1

Sport, Holiday

“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

Game, Boy

“It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game.”

Grantland Rice (1880–1954) American sportswriter

Game

“I hope you will grow up gentle and good, and never learn bad ways; do your work with a good will, lift your feet up well when you trot, and never bite or kick even in play.”

Anna Sewell book Black Beauty

Source: Black Beauty

Hope, Way, Learning

“The only reason I remembered this play was because it had a mad person in it, and everything I had ever read about mad people stuck in my mind, while everything else flew out.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

People, Reading, Personality, Madness

“And I am all the things I have ever loved: scuppernong wine, cool baptisms in silent water, dream books and number playing.”

Toni Morrison (1931–2019) American writer

Love, Books, Dreams, Water

“One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

“Play it fuckin' loud!”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

“I do believe in the power of story. I believe that stories have an important role to play in the formation of human beings, that they can stimulate, amaze and inspire their listeners.”

Hayao Miyazaki (1941) Japanese animator, film director, and mangaka

“The press today is an army with carefully organized weapons, the journalists its officers, the readers its soldiers. The reader neither knows nor is supposed to know the purposes for which he is used and the role he is to play.”

Oswald Spengler book The Decline of the West

The Decline of the West (1918, 1923)
Context: The press to-day is an army with carefully organized arms and branches, with journalists as officers, and readers as soldiers. But here, as in every army, the soldier obeys blindly, and war-aims and operation-plans change without his knowledge. The reader neither knows, nor is allowed to know, the purposes for which he is used, nor even the role that he is to play. A more appalling caricature of freedom of thought cannot be imagined. Formerly a man did not dare to think freely. Now he dares, but cannot; his will to think is only a willingness to think to order, and this is what he feels as his liberty.

“They had parted as boys, and now life presented one of them with a fugitive and the other with a dying man. Both wondered whether this was due to the cards they'd been dealt or to the way they had played them.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Shadow of the Wind

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

Life, Way, Boy, Parting

“you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.”

Miles Davis (1926–1991) American jazz musician

Time

“Ninety-nine percent of the world's lovers are not with their first choice. That's what makes the jukebox play.”

Willie Nelson (1933) American country music singer-songwriter.

World, Lovers

“The last act is bloody, however fine the rest of the play”

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher

“One day humanity will play with law just as children play with disused objects, not in order to restore them to their canonical use but to free them from it for good.”

Giorgio Agamben (1942) Italian philosopher

Source: State of Exception

Children, Law

“It is one of those lessons that every child should learn: Don't play with fire, sharp objects, or ancient artifacts.”

Patricia Briggs (1965) American writer

Learning

“What is love? Love is playing every game as if it's your last!”

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

Love, Game

“Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Speech at the Somerville Club, February 27, 1895

Life, Learning

“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

People, Game, Cheating, Box

“You have to be able to center yourself, to let all of your emotions go. Don’t ever forget that you play with your soul as well as your body.”

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (1947) American basketball player

Soul, Forgetting

“In our play we reveal what kind of people we are”

Ovid (-43–17 BC) Roman poet

People

“I'm the empty stage where various actors act out various plays.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Source: The Book of Disquiet

“In chess, as a purely intellectual game, where randomness is excluded, - for someone to play against himself is absurd…
It is as paradoxical, as attempting to jump over his own shadow.”

Stefan Zweig (1881–1942) Austrian writer

Source: Chess Story

Game

“Have regular hours for work and play; make each day both useful and pleasant, and prove that you understand the worth of time by employing it well. Then youth will bring few regrets, and life will become a beautiful success.”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women

Life, Youth, Beauty, Understanding

“If you want to play, you gotta pay.”

Stephen King book Duma Key

Source: Duma Key

“Inside, my soul became so cold I hated everything. I even despised the sun, for I knew I would never be able to play in its warm presence. I cringed with hate whenever I heard other children laughing, as they played outside. My stomach coiled whenever I smelled food that was about to be served to somebody else, knowing it wasn't for me.”

Dave Pelzer (1960) American author

Source: A Child Called "It"

Hate, Children, Food, Soul

“Nowadays, HR professionals play three roles: • Storyteller • Strategy interpreter • Strategic facilitator”

Dave Ulrich (1953) American academic

Source: HR from the Outside In, 2012, p. 92

“Little children play with dolls in the outer room just as they like, without any care of fear or restraint; but as soon as their mother comes in, they throw aside their dolls and run to her crying, "Mamma, mamma." You too, are now playing in this material world, infatuated with the dolls of wealth, honour, fame, etc., If however, you once see your Divine Mother, you will not afterwards find pleasure in all these. Throwing them all aside, you will run to her.”

Ramakrishna (1836–1886) Indian mystic and religious preacher

Source: Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna (1960), p. 12

Children, Pleasure, World, Fear

“Just a second,
It's my favorite song they're gonna play.
And I cannot text you with
A drink in my hand, eh.
You shoulda made some plans with me,
You knew that I was free.
And now you won't stop calling me;
I'm kinda busy.”

Lady Gaga (1986) American singer, songwriter, and actress

Telephone, written by Lady Gaga, Rodney "Darkchild" Jerkins, LaShawn Daniels, Lazonate Franklin, and Beyoncé
Song lyrics, The Fame Monster (2009)

Drink, Business

“In our society, defecation involves an individual in activity which is defined as inconsistent with the cleanliness and purity standards expressed in many of our performances. Such activity also causes the individual to disarrange his clothing and to 'go out of play," that is, to drop from his face the expressive mask that he employs in face-to-face interaction. At the same time it becomes difficult for him to reassemble his personal front should the need to enter into interaction suddenly occur. Perhaps that is a reason why toilet doors in our society have locks on them.”

Erving Goffman book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

Source: 1950s-1960s, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, 1959, p. 121 (1973 edition)

Time, Personality, Clothes

“Last name Ever/ First name Greatest/ Like a sprained ankle boy, I aint nothing to play with”

Drake (1986) Canadian rapper, singer, songwriter, record producer, and actor

"Forever" featuring Kanye West, Lil Wayne and Eminem
2000s

Boy

“To be glad of life because it gives you the chance to love and to work and to play and to look up at the stars- to be satisfied with your possessions but not content with yourself until you have made the best of them- to despise nothing in the world except falsehood and meanness, and to fear nothing except cowardice- to be governed by you admirations rather than by your disgusts- to covet nothing that is your neighbors except his kindness of heart and gentleness of manners- to think seldom of your enemies, often of your friends, and every day of Christ; to spend as much time as you can in God's out-of doors- these are the little guideposts on the footpaths to peace.”

Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) American diplomat

Footpaths to Peace.

Love, Life, God, World

“Our virtues themselves are not free and floating qualities over which we retain a permanent control and power of disposal; they come to be so closely linked in our minds with the actions in conjunction with which we make it our duty to practice them, that, if we are suddenly called upon to perform some action of a different order, it takes us by surprise, and without our supposing for a moment that it might involve the bringing of those very same virtues into play.”

Marcel Proust book In Search of Lost Time

Source: In Search of Lost Time, Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1927), Vol II: Within a Budding Grove (1919)

“Sometimes when earth's gods are homesick they visit in the still of the night the peaks where once they dwelt, and weep softly as they try to play in the olden way on remembered slopes.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Fiction, The Other Gods (1921)

God, Way, Night

“Man only plays when in the full meaning of the word he is a man, and he is only completely a man when he plays.”

Friedrich Schiller book On the Aesthetic Education of Man

Letter 15
On the Aesthetic Education of Man (1794)

“We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.
For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus — and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.”

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

2009, First Inaugural Address (January 2009)

Life, War, World, Peace

“Garbage time is running out. Can what is playing you make it to level-2?”

Nick Land (1962) British philosopher

"Meltdown" http://www.ccru.net/swarm1/1_melt.htm (1994)

Time

“As for literary criticism in general: I have long felt that any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel or a play or a poem is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae or a banana split.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Palm Sunday

The People One Knows
Palm Sunday (1981)

Rage, Personality

“I have loved you ever since. I know full well that you are used to hearing women say that they love you. But I am sure that no one else has ever loved you so lavishly, with such doglike fidelity, with such devotion, as I did and do. Nothing can equal the unnoticed love of a child. It is hopeless and subservient; it is patient and passionate; it is something which the covetous love of a grown woman, the love that is unconsciously exacting, can never be. Non but lonely children can cherish such a passion. The others will squander their feelings in companionship, will dissipate them in confidential talks. They have heard and read much of love, and they know that it comes to all. They play with it like a toy; they flaunt it as a boy flaunts his first cigarette. But I had no confidant; I had been neither taught nor warned; I was inexperience and unsuspecting.”

Stefan Zweig book Letter from an Unknown Woman

Letter from an Unknown Woman (1922)

Love, Women, Children, Feeling

“Thunder only happens when it's raining,
Players only love you when they're playing,
Say, women, they will come and they will go,
When the rain washes you clean you'll know.”

Stevie Nicks (1948) American singer and songwriter, member of Fleetwood Mac

Dreams
The Dance (Fleetwood Mac album) (1997), Rumours (1977)

Love, Women

“I have met Rossini, Cherubini, Baillot, etc.—also Kalkbrenner. You would not believe how curious I was about Herz, Liszt, Hiller, etc. — They are all zero beside Kalkbrenner. I confess that I have played like Herz, but would wish to play like Kalkbrenner. If Paganini is perfection, Kalkbrenner is his equal, but in quite another style.”

Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849) Polish composer

His letter to Tytus Woyciechowski in Poturzyn. Paris, 12 December 1831.

Perfection

“Sometimes you're just happy playing. Some people, some media, unfortunately, don't understand that it's okay just to play tennis and enjoy it. They always think you have to win everything, it always needs to be a success story, and if it's not, obviously, what is the point? Maybe you have to go back and think, Why have I started playing tennis? Because I just like it. It's actually sort of a dream hobby that became somewhat of a job. Some people just don't get that, ever.”

Roger Federer (1981) Swiss tennis player

Tennis - ATP World Tour - Shanghai 2012 Thursday - Federer Recalls First Time At No. 1 http://www.atpworldtour.com/News/Tennis/2012/10/41/Shanghai-Thursday-Federer-Recalls-Rise-To-Top.aspx

Happiness, People, Dreams, Understanding

“If you're squeezed for information,
that's when you've got to play it dumb:
You just say you're out there waiting
for the miracle to come.”

Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter

"Waiting for the Miracle" (co-written with Sharon Robinson)
The Future (1992)

Waiting

“The Master once referred to the Hindu notion that all creation is "leela" — God's play — and the universe is his playground. The aim of spirituality, he claimed, is to make all life play.
This seemed too frivolous for a puritanical visitor. "Is their no room then for work?"
"Of course there is. But work becomes spiritual only when it is transformed into play."”

Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer

Source: One Minute Nonsense (1992), p. 96
("Leela" is more commonly spelled "Lila")

Life, God, Universe

“There are good people who, being discontented with present-day conditions, think that these conditions can be cured by a return to what they call the “principles of the fathers.” […] But to go back to the governmental theories of a hundred years ago would accomplish nothing whatever; for it was under the conditions of unrestricted individualism and freedom from Government interference, countenanced by those theories, that the trusts grew up, and private fortunes, enormous far beyond the deserts of the accumulators were gathered. […] It may be that, in the past development of our country, complete freedom from all restrictions, and the consequent unlimited encouragement and reward given to the most successful industrial leaders, played a part in which the beneﬁts outweighed the disadvantages. But nowadays such is not the case.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, The Progressives, Past and Present (1910)

People, Thinking, Freedom, Success

“The fountain of death makes the still water of life play.”

Rabindranath Tagore Stray Birds

225
Stray Birds (1916)

Life, Death, Water

“A football team is like a piano. You need eight men to carry it and three who can play the damn thing.”

Bill Shankly (1913–1981) Scottish footballer and manager

Quoted by John Toshack in Kevin McCarra, "How Benítez built Liverpool," http://football.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,1691681,00.html The Guardian (2006-01-21)

Men, Football

“Even in childhood I watched the hours flow, independent of any reference, any action, any event, the disjunction of time from what was not itself, its autonomous existence, its special status, its empire, its tyranny. I remember quite clearly that afternoon when, for the first time, confronting the empty universe, I was no more than a passage of moments reluctant to go on playing their proper parts. Time was coming unstuck from being — at my expense.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)

Universe, Time, Parting, Childhood

“We should willingly take risks in supporting new projects. The tendency is to play it safe when funding is low, but we need to remember that the greatest risks have the greatest payoffs.”

Jerome Isaac Friedman (1930) American physicist

"Will Innovation Flourish in the Future?," 2002

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Quotes about play page 3

Quotes about play
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