Quotes about play
page 44

Baba Hari Dass photo

“Work honestly, meditate every day, meet people without fear, and play.”

Baba Hari Dass (1923–2018) master yogi, author, builder, commentator of Indian spiritual tradition

Source: Ashtanga Yoga Primer, 1981, p.74

Al Gore photo

“Fortunately, the Internet has the potential to revitalize the role played by the people in our constitutional framework.”

Al Gore (1948) 45th Vice President of the United States

Quotes, The Assault on Reason (2007)
Context: Fortunately, the Internet has the potential to revitalize the role played by the people in our constitutional framework. It has extremely low entry barriers for individuals. It is the most interactive medium in history and the one with the greatest potential for connecting individuals to one another and to a universe of knowledge. It's a platform for pursuing the truth, and the decentralized creation and distribution of ideas, in the same way that markets are a decentralized mechanism for the creation and distribution of goods and services. It's a platform, in other words, for reason. But the Internet must be developed and protected, in the same way we develop and protect markets — through the establishment of fair rules of engagement and the exercise of the rule of law. The same ferocity that our Founders devoted to protect the freedom and independence of the press is now appropriate for our defense of the freedom of the Internet. The stakes are the same: the survival of our Republic. We must ensure that the Internet remains open and accessible to all citizens without any limitation on the ability of individuals to choose the content they wish regardless of the Internet service provider they use to connect to the Web. We cannot take this future for granted. We must be prepared to fight for it, because of the threat of corporate consolidation and control over the Internet marketplace of ideas.

“How to play fair.”

Frank Crane (1861–1928) American Presbyterian minister

Four Minute Essays Vol. 7 (1919), A School for Living

Warren Buffett photo

“It’s a game of a million inferences. There are a lot of things to draw inferences from — cards played and not played.”

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

On the game of bridge, as quoted in Forbes (2 June 1997); also quoted in The Warren Buffett Portfolio: Mastering the Power of the Focus Investment Strategy (2000), p. 112
Context: It’s a game of a million inferences. There are a lot of things to draw inferences from — cards played and not played. These inferences tell you something about the probabilities. It's got to be the best intellectual exercise out there. You're seeing through new situations every ten minutes. Bridge is about weighing gain/loss ratios. You're doing calculations all the time.

Ray Bradbury photo

“For it is a mad world and it will get madder if we allow the minorities, be they dwarf or giant, orangutan or dolphin, nuclear-head or water-conversationalist, pro-computerologist or Neo-Luddite, simpleton or sage, to interfere with aesthetics. The real world is the playing ground for each and every group, to make or unmake laws.”

Fahrenheit 451 (1953), Coda (1979)
Context: For it is a mad world and it will get madder if we allow the minorities, be they dwarf or giant, orangutan or dolphin, nuclear-head or water-conversationalist, pro-computerologist or Neo-Luddite, simpleton or sage, to interfere with aesthetics. The real world is the playing ground for each and every group, to make or unmake laws. But the tip of the nose of my book or stories or poems is where their rights end and my territorial imperatives begin, run and rule. If Mormons do not like my plays, let them write their own. If the Irish hate my Dublin stories, let them rent typewriters. If teachers and grammar school editors find my jawbreaker sentences shatter their mushmilk teeth, let them eat stale cake dunked in weak tea of their own ungodly manufacture.

Sania Mirza photo

“All I want to do is play.”

Sania Mirza (1986) Indian tennis player

Admn in: Sania appointed Telangana’s Industrial Brand Ambassador http://www.indtoday.com/sania-appointed-telanganas-industrial-brand-ambassador-indtoday-com/, indtoday.com, 22 July 2014

Bill Bailey photo
St. Vincent (musician) photo

“Lover, I don’t play to win but for the thrill until I’m spent.”

St. Vincent (musician) (1982) American singer-songwriter

"The Strangers" - Live @ Great American Music Hall (27 February 2009) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAX3P1ueR6w
Actor (2009)
Context: Lover, I don’t play to win but for the thrill until I’m spent.
Paint the black hole blacker. Paint the black hole blacker

“This could get worse; Khedira plays it inside. Oh! It's four, nil! Unbelievable! Kroos again! And Brazil are just being played off the park!”

Ian Darke (1950) British association football and boxing commentator

Brazil v. Germany (8 July 2014).
2010s, 2014, 2014 FIFA World Cup
Context: But, it isn't working. They're two down. Lahm, this time. Müller missed it! And that's three, Toni Kroos! Germany are running riot! They cannot believe it! Splendid hit, from Kroos. You've got something on that, as well. With Julio Cesar, couldn't keep it out. And Toni Kroos marks his fiftieth cap for Germany, with a goal. And once or twice in there, it's just resembling a shooting gallery. Oh, and look at this now. This could get worse; Khedira plays it inside. Oh! It's four, nil! Unbelievable! Kroos again! And Brazil are just being played off the park! This is quite astonishing.

Bill Bailey photo

“Without your love
It's a honky-tonk parade
Without your love
It's a melody played in a penny arcade.”

Yip Harburg (1896–1981) American song lyricist

"It's Only a Paper Moon" (1933) (co-written with Billy Rose).
Context: Without your love
It's a honky-tonk parade
Without your love
It's a melody played in a penny arcade. It's a Barnum and Bailey world
Just as phony as it can be
But it wouldn't be make-believe
If you believed in me.

Tenzin Gyatso photo

“With the ever-growing impact of science on our lives, religion and spirituality have a greater role to play by reminding us of our humanity. There is no contradiction between the two.”

Tenzin Gyatso (1935) spiritual leader of Tibet

Nobel acceptance speech (1989)
Context: With the ever-growing impact of science on our lives, religion and spirituality have a greater role to play by reminding us of our humanity. There is no contradiction between the two. Each gives us valuable insights into the other. Both science and the teachings of the Buddha tell us of the fundamental unity of all things. This understanding is crucial if we are to take positive and decisive action on the pressing global concern with the environment. I believe all religions pursue the same goals, that of cultivating human goodness and bringing happiness to all human beings. Though the means might appear different the ends are the same.

“I was a lonely child though there were children in plenty on our land. But my nurse forbade me to play with them. She guarded my dignity; more than my mother, indeed, who being so great a lady took dignity for granted.”

The Gentle Falcon (1957)
Context: I was a lonely child though there were children in plenty on our land. But my nurse forbade me to play with them. She guarded my dignity; more than my mother, indeed, who being so great a lady took dignity for granted.
But in any case there was little time for them to play. There was work for even the smallest upon our land; some of our peasants had run away, tempted by ever-rising wages. Wages fixed by law were certainly low; but, like many another ruined in the French wars, we had no money to pay a penny more than the law laid down. All over the country men were running away from their masters and the land lost as many laborers as by the Black Death itself. <!-- p. 14

Saint Patrick photo

“I do not overreach myself, for I too have my part to play with "those whom he has called to himself and predestined" to teach the gospel in the midst of considerable persecutions "as far as the ends of the earth"”

Saint Patrick (385–461) 5th-century Romano-British Christian missionary and bishop in Ireland

Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus (c.450?)
Context: I do not overreach myself, for I too have my part to play with "those whom he has called to himself and predestined" to teach the gospel in the midst of considerable persecutions "as far as the ends of the earth", even if the enemy reveals his true envy through the tyranny of Coroticus, who fears neither God nor the priests whom he has chosen and to whom he has given the highest divine power, namely that "those whom they bind on earth are bound in heaven."

Ryan Adams photo

“The night plays games”

Ryan Adams (1974) American alt-country/rock singer-songwriter

Nobody Girl
29 (2005)

Alan Watts photo
E.E. Cummings photo
Richard Wright photo
Mike Scott photo

“He was young and black and beautiful
big eyed, perfect skin an'
he played my guitar like a lightning storm”

Mike Scott (1958) songwriter, musician

"The Return of Jimi Hendrix"
Dream Harder (1993)
Context: He was young and black and beautiful
big eyed, perfect skin an'
he played my guitar like a lightning storm
like twirlin' feathers in the wind
he could make it sound like the end of the world
a fire, the flick of a knife
he could squeeze it slow and masterful
like the hand that brought the world to life

Alan Moore photo

“When I was a kid, I used to go to the seaside and play in the waves. The thing you learn about waves, is that when you see a big one coming, you run towards it.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

De Abaitua interview (1998)
Context: The magician to some degree is trying to drive him or herself mad in a controlled setting, within controlled laws. You ask the protective spirits to look after you, or whatever. This provides a framework over an essentially amorphous experience. You are setting up your terms, your ritual, your channels – but you deliberately stepping over the edge into the madness. You are not falling over the edge, or tripping over the edge.
When I was a kid, I used to go to the seaside and play in the waves. The thing you learn about waves, is that when you see a big one coming, you run towards it. You try and get out of its way and you’ll end up twenty yards up the beach covered in scratches. Dive into it, and then you can get behind it. You get on top it, you won’t be hurt. It is counter-intuitive, the impulse is to run away, but the right thing to do is to plunge into it deliberately, and be in control when you do it. Magic is a response to the madness of the twentieth century.

Philip K. Dick photo

“Cris didn't want to play. He never played.”

Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) American author

The Golden Man (1954)
Context: Cris didn't want to play. He never played. He was off in a world of his own, a world into which none of them could come. He never joined in anything, games or chores or family activities. He was by himself always. Remote, detached, aloof. Seeing past everyone and everything — that is, until all at once something clicked and he momentarily rephased, reentered their world briefly.

Albert Einstein photo

“The words or the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought.”

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

Answer to a survey written by the French mathematician Jaques Hadamard, from Hadamard's An Essay on the Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field (1945). Reprinted in Ideas and Opinions (1954). His full set of answers to the questions can be read on p. 3 here http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/Goodies/Einstein_think/index.html.
1940s
Context: The words or the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought. The psychical entities which seem to serve as elements in thoughts are certain signs and more or less clear images which can be "voluntarily" reproduced and combined. There is, of course, a certain connection between those elements and relevant logical concepts. It is also clear that the desire to arrive finally at logically connected concepts is the emotional basis of this rather vague play with the above-mentioned elements.... The above-mentioned elements are, in my case, of visual and some muscular type. Conventional words or other signs have to be sought for laboriously only in a secondary stage, when the mentioned associative play is sufficiently established and can be reproduced at will.

David Gilmour photo

“I had a listen, I was intrigued … by this strange voice, and I went to her house, met her parents down in Kent, and she played me, it must have been forty or fifty songs, on tape, and I thought, I should try to do something.”

David Gilmour (1946) guitarist, singer, best known as a member of Pink Floyd

… We were making — Pink Floyd was making the Wish You Were Here album, and I think we had the record company people down at Abbey Road, in number 3, and I said to them "Do you want to hear something I've got? And they said "sure", so we found another room, and I played it to them, "The Man with the Child in His Eyes", and they said "Yep, thank you – we'll have it."
On first hearing 15-year-old Kate Bush's demo tapes, and meeting with her.
The Kate Bush Story (2014)

David Bowie photo

“Ziggy played guitar.”

David Bowie (1947–2016) British musician, actor, record producer and arranger

Ziggy Stardust
Song lyrics, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972)

Robert H. Jackson photo

“The record is full of other examples of dissimulations and evasions. Even Schacht showed that he, too, had adopted the Nazi attitude that truth is any story which succeeds. Confronted on cross-examination with a long record of broken vows and false words, he declared in justification and I quote from the record: "I think you can score many more successes when you want to lead someone if you don't tell them the truth than if you tell them the truth." This was the philosophy of the National Socialists. When for years they have deceived the world, and masked falsehood with plausibilities, can anyone be surprised that they continue their habits of a lifetime in this dock? Credibility is one of the main issues of this Trial. Only those who have failed to learn the bitter lessons of the last decade can doubt that men who have always played on the unsuspecting credulity of generous opponents would not hesitate to do the same, now. It is against such a background that these defendants now ask this Tribunal to say that they are not guilty of planning, executing, or conspiring to commit this long list of crimes and wrongs. They stand before the record of this Trial as bloodstained Gloucester stood by the body of his slain king. He begged of the widow, as they beg of you: "Say I slew them not." And the Queen replied, "Then say they were not slain. But dead they are…"”

Robert H. Jackson (1892–1954) American judge

If you were to say of these men that they are not guilty, it would be as true to say that there has been no war, there are no slain, there has been no crime.
Summation for the Prosecution, July 26, 1946
Quotes from the Nuremberg Trials (1945-1946)

Ingmar Bergman photo

“In some way I feel the end of the play was influenced by my father's intervention — that at all costs one must do what it is one's duty to do, particularly in spiritual contexts. Even if it can seem meaningless.”

Ingmar Bergman (1918–2007) Swedish filmmaker

On Winter Light, Jonas Sima interview <!-- pages 173-174 -->
Bergman on Bergman (1970)
Context: We drove about, looking for churches, my father and I. My father, as you probably know, was a clergyman — he knew all the Uppland churches like the back of his hand. We went to morning services in variouis places and were deeply impressed by the spiritual poverty of these churches, by the lack of any congregation and the miserable spiritual status of the clergy, the poverty of their sermons, and the nonchalance and indifference of the ritual.
In one church, I remember — and I think it has a great deal to do with the end of the film — Father and I were sitting together. My father had already been retired for many years, and was old and frail.... Just before the bell begins to toll, we hear a car outside, a shining Volvo: the clergyman climbs out hurriedly, and there is a faint buzz from the vestry, and then the clergyman appears before he ought to — when the bell stops, that is — and says he feels very poorly and that he's talked to the rector and the rector has said he can use an abbrviated form of the service and drop the part at the altar. So there would be just one psalm and a sermon and another psalm. And goes out. Whereon my father, furious, began hammering on the pew, got to his feet and marched out into the vestry, where a long mumbled conversation ensued; after which the churchwarden also went in, then someone ran up the organ gallery to fetch the organist, after which the churchwarden came out and announced that there would be a complete service after all. My father took the service at the altar, but at the beginning and the end.
In some way I feel the end of the play was influenced by my father's intervention — that at all costs one must do what it is one's duty to do, particularly in spiritual contexts. Even if it can seem meaningless.

Narendra Modi photo

“People who played the politics of appeasement have ruined the country, not us.”

Narendra Modi (1950) Prime Minister of India

2002, Interview, 27 August 2002
Context: As far as the BJP is concerned, our belief has been the same for years. Justice to all, appeasement of none. We cannot support divisive politics. We strongly believe in President A. P. J. Abdul Kalam when he says we need 'unity of minds'. People who played the politics of appeasement have ruined the country, not us. Blame them.

Henri Poincaré photo

“In this domain of arithmetic,.. the mathematical infinite already plays a preponderant rôle, and without it there would be no science, because there would be nothing general.”

Source: Science and Hypothesis (1901), Ch. I. (1905) Tr. George Bruce Halstead
Context: This procedure is the demonstration by recurrence. We first establish a theorem for n = 1; then we show that if it is true of n - 1, it is true of n, and thence conclude that it is true for all the whole numbers... Here then we have the mathematical reasoning par excellence, and we must examine it more closely.
... The essential characteristic of reasoning by recurrence is that it contains, condensed, so to speak, in a single formula, an infinity of syllogisms.
... to arrive at the smallest theorem [we] can not dispense with the aid of reasoning by recurrence, for this is an instrument which enables us to pass from the finite to the infinite.
This instrument is always useful, for, allowing us to overleap at a bound as many stages as we wish, it spares us verifications, long, irksome and monotonous, which would quickly become impracticable. But it becomes indispensable as soon as we aim at the general theorem...
In this domain of arithmetic,.. the mathematical infinite already plays a preponderant rôle, and without it there would be no science, because there would be nothing general.<!--pp.10-12

Arsène Wenger photo

“This guy should never play football again. What is he doing on the football pitch?”

Arsène Wenger (1949) French footballer and manager

Martin Taylor, who injured Arsenal striker Eduardo. (23 February 2008) http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2008/feb/23/newsstory.birminghamcityfc
Context: This guy should never play football again. What is he doing on the football pitch? I've gone along with the idea for a long time that to stop Arsenal, you have to kick Arsenal. I knew that was coming for a long time now.

Henry David Thoreau photo

“All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, with moral questions; and betting naturally accompanies it.”

Civil Disobedience (1849)
Context: All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, with moral questions; and betting naturally accompanies it. The character of the voters is not staked. I cast my vote, perchance, as I think right; but I am not vitally concerned that that right should prevail. I am willing to leave it to the majority. Its obligation, therefore, never exceeds that of expediency. Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men. When the majority shall at length vote for the abolition of slavery, it will be because they are indifferent to slavery, or because there is but little slavery left to be abolished by their vote. They will then be the only slaves. Only his vote can hasten the abolition of slavery who asserts his own freedom by his vote.

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan photo

“To approve of warfare but criticize its methods, it has been well said is like approving of the wolf eating the lamb but criticizing the table-manners. War is war and not a game of sport to be played according to rules.”

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) Indian philosopher and statesman who was the first Vice President and the second President of India

Kalki : or The Future of Civilization (1929)
Context: War with its devastated fields and ruined cities, with its millions of dead and more millions of maimed and wounded, its broken-hearted and defiled women and its starved children bereft of their natural protection, its hate and atmosphere of lies and intrigue, is an outrage on all that is human. So long as this devil-dance does not disgust us, we cannot pretend to be civilized. It is no good preventing cruelty to animals and building hospitals for the sick and poor houses for the destitute so long as we willing to mow down masses of men by machine-guns and poison non-combatants, including the aged and the infirm, women and children — and all for what? For the glory of God and the honour of the nation!
It is quite true that we attempt to regulate war, as we cannot suppress it; but the attempt cannot succeed. For war symbolizes the spirit of strife between two opposing national units which is to be settled by force. When we allow the use of force as the only argument to put down opposition, we cannot rightly discriminate between one kind of force and another. We must put down opposition by mobilizing all the forces at our disposal. There is no real difference between a stick and a sword, or gunpowder and poison gas. So long as it is the recognized method of putting down opposition, every nation will endeavour to make its destructive weapons more and more efficient. War is its only law add the highest virtue is to win, and every nation has to tread this terrific and deadly road. To approve of warfare but criticize its methods, it has been well said is like approving of the wolf eating the lamb but criticizing the table-manners. War is war and not a game of sport to be played according to rules.

Khalil Gibran photo

“And now let us play our reeds together.”

Sarkis an old Greek Shepherd, called the madman: Jesus and Pan
Jesus, The Son of Man (1928)
Context: "And now let us play our reeds together."
And they played together.
And their music smote heaven and earth, and a terror struck all living things.
I heard the bellow of beasts and the hunger of the forest. And I heard the cry of lonely men, and the plaint of those who long for what they know not.
I heard the sighing of the maiden for her lover, and the panting of the luckless hunter for his prey.
And then there came peace into their music, and the heavens and the earth sang together.
All this I saw in my dream, and all this I heard.

James Burke (science historian) photo

“When we get married, or buried, get christened, or anything else too important to play by ear, the event is turned into a kind of play where everybody gets a role they act out. It's a kind of public agreement to stick to the general rules about whatever it is.”

James Burke (science historian) (1936) British broadcaster, science historian, author, and television producer

The Day the Universe Changed (1985), 1 - The Way We Are
Context: The oldest answers to the most basic questions about how to operate are common to virtually every culture on the planet, because at the simplest level, every culture needs to keep order -- especially this kind: (James Burke displays a wedding ring.) This is one of those things in life we protect most against being changed when knowledge changes us. We protect it by turning it into a ritual. When we get married, or buried, get christened, or anything else too important to play by ear, the event is turned into a kind of play where everybody gets a role they act out. It's a kind of public agreement to stick to the general rules about whatever it is. The people doing it are effectively saying, "No matter what else may change, we won't rock the boat! We're not maverick. You can trust us." Expressions of approval follow. Most of these ritual ways of answering a social need that we got from the past look like it. They include something from an ancient rite -- in this case, the old symbol of fertility: the ring. And then, it's all done in the presence of a supernatural being: a God. So, the agreement is also made under what was once a real threat of heavenly retribution if you broke your promise later on. Some things, this ritual says, must be permanent.

Bob Black photo

“What I really want to see is work turned into play.”

The Abolition of Work (1985)
Context: What I really want to see is work turned into play. A first step is to discard the notions of a "job" and an "occupation." Even activities that already have some ludic content lose most of it by being reduced to jobs which certain people, and only those people, are forced to do to the exclusion of all else. Is it not odd that farm workers toil painfully in the fields while their airconditioned masters go home every weekend and putter about in their gardens? Under a system of permanent revelry, we will witness the Golden Age of the dilettante which will put the Renaissance to shame. There won't be any more jobs, just things to do and people to do them.

George William Curtis photo

“We thought we could and we tried it. The breath of our national nostrils was equal rights. The jewel of our soul was fair play for all men. But, selecting one class of our population, we denied to them every natural right and sought to extinguish their very humanity. Resistance was hopeless, but they protested silently by still wearing the form of man, of which we could not deprive them. Planting both feet upon the prostrate and helpless, men as much as we, we politely invited the world to contemplate the prosperity of the United States”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1860s, The Good Fight (1865)
Context: We thought we could and we tried it. The breath of our national nostrils was equal rights. The jewel of our soul was fair play for all men. But, selecting one class of our population, we denied to them every natural right and sought to extinguish their very humanity. Resistance was hopeless, but they protested silently by still wearing the form of man, of which we could not deprive them. Planting both feet upon the prostrate and helpless, men as much as we, we politely invited the world to contemplate the prosperity of the United States. Forests falling, factories humming, gold glittering in every man's pocket! Above all, would the world please to take notice that it was a land of liberty, and that we offered a happy home to the oppressed of every clime? 'A wise and sensible man was John Rutledge of South Carolina', smiled the complacent country, smoothing its full pockets, 'morals have nothing to do with politics'. 'Good', mutters the ostrich, as he buries his head in the sand, 'now nobody sees me'.

“Being with Hemingway meant joining in his elaborate game playing as a necessary mark of respect. Tennessee asked only that you be colorful and that you be honest.”

Elaine Dundy (1921–2008) American journalist, actress

"A Stranger Comes to Town" (c. 2001)
Context: Being with Hemingway meant joining in his elaborate game playing as a necessary mark of respect. Tennessee asked only that you be colorful and that you be honest.
Looking back I still find the 50s the most exhilarating decade I've lived through. The only mistake I made then was in thinking it would go on forever. I keep reading it was all Dull Conformity and I wonder where those people were living. Not on my planet. The fact that we had won World War 2 and that we were alive led to a post-war cultural explosion.

Nikolai Berdyaev photo

“Fate and freedom alike play a part in history; and there are times, as in wars and revolutions, when fate is the stronger of the two. Freedom”

Nikolai Berdyaev (1874–1948) Russian philosopher

the freedom of man and of nations — could never have been the origin of two world wars. These latter were brought about by fate, which exercises its power owing to the weakness and decline of freedom and of the creative spirit of man. Almost all contemporary political ideologies, with their characteristic tendency to state-idolatry, are likewise largely a product of two world wars, begotten as they are of the inexorability's of fate.
Source: Political Testament (1949), p. 32

François-René de Chateaubriand photo

“A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation.”

François-René de Chateaubriand (1768–1848) French writer, politician, diplomat and historian

Misattributed to Chateaubriand on the internet and even some recently published books, this statement actually originated with L. P. Jacks in Education through Recreation (1932)
Misattributed
Context: A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both.

Leo Tolstoy photo

“This new fraud is just like the old ones: its essence lies in substituting something external for the use of our own reason and conscience and that of our predecessors: in the Church teaching this external thing was revelation, in the scientific teaching it is observation. The trick played by this science is to destroy man's faith in reason and conscience by directing attention to the grossest deviations from the use of human reason and conscience, and having clothed the deception in a scientific theory, to assure them that by acquiring knowledge of external phenomena they will get to know indubitable facts which will reveal to them the law of man's life. And the mental demoralization consists in this, that coming to believe that things which should be decided by conscience and reason are decided by observation, these people lose their consciousness of good and evil and become incapable of understanding the expression and definitions of good and evil that have been formed by the whole preceding life of humanity. All this, in their jargon, is conditional and subjective. It must all be abandoned - they say - the truth cannot be understood by one's reason, for one may err, but there is another path which is infallible and almost mechanical: one must study facts. And facts must be studied on the basis of the scientists' science, that is, on the basis of two unfounded propositions: positivism and evolution which are put forward as indubitable truths.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

What then must we do? (1886)
Context: This new fraud is just like the old ones: its essence lies in substituting something external for the use of our own reason and conscience and that of our predecessors: in the Church teaching this external thing was revelation, in the scientific teaching it is observation. The trick played by this science is to destroy man's faith in reason and conscience by directing attention to the grossest deviations from the use of human reason and conscience, and having clothed the deception in a scientific theory, to assure them that by acquiring knowledge of external phenomena they will get to know indubitable facts which will reveal to them the law of man's life. And the mental demoralization consists in this, that coming to believe that things which should be decided by conscience and reason are decided by observation, these people lose their consciousness of good and evil and become incapable of understanding the expression and definitions of good and evil that have been formed by the whole preceding life of humanity. All this, in their jargon, is conditional and subjective. It must all be abandoned - they say - the truth cannot be understood by one's reason, for one may err, but there is another path which is infallible and almost mechanical: one must study facts. And facts must be studied on the basis of the scientists' science, that is, on the basis of two unfounded propositions: positivism and evolution which are put forward as indubitable truths. And the reigning science, with not less misleading solemnity than the Church, announces that the solution of all questions of life is only possible by the study of the facts of nature, and especially of organisms. A frivolous crowd of youths mastered by the novelty of this authority, which is as yet not merely not destroyed but not even touched by criticism, throws itself into the study of these facts of natural science as the sole path which, according to the assertions of the prevailing doctrine, can lead to the elucidation of the questions of life. But the further these disciples advance in this study the further and further are they removed not only from the possibility but even from the very thought of solving life's problems, and the more they become accustomed not so much to observe as to take on trust what they are told of the observations of others (to believe in cells, in protoplasm, in the fourth state of matter,1 &c.), the more and more does the form hide the contents from them; the more and more do they lose consciousness of good and evil and capacity to understand the expressions and definitions of good and evil worked out by the whole preceding life of humanity; the more and more do they adopt the specialized scientific jargon of conventional expressions which have no general human significance; the farther and farther do they wander among the debris of quite unilluminated observations; the more and more do they lose capacity not only to think independently but even to under-stand another man's fresh human thought lying outside their Talmud; and, what is most important, they pass their best years in growing unaccustomed to life, that is, to labour, and grow accustomed to consider their condition justified, while they become physically good-for-nothing parasites. And just like the theologians and the Talmudists they completely castrate their brains and become eunuchs of thought. And just like them, to the degree to which they become stupefied, they acquire a self-confidence which deprives them for ever of the possibility of returning to a simple clear and human way of thinking.

Harbhajan Singh photo

“Playing for India has been an honour and I want to continue doing that. I don't know anything else to do other than cricket. I want to play as long as I can”

Harbhajan Singh (1980) Indian cricketer

Singh on playing for India, quoted on sports.ndtv, "Harbhajan Singh Says he Urged Mahendra Singh Dhoni to Bat up the Order in Asia Cup Final" http://sports.ndtv.com/asia-cup-2016/news/256271-harbhajan-singh-says-he-urged-mahendra-singh-dhoni-to-bat-up-the-order-in-asia-cup-final, March 8, 2016.

Sri Aurobindo photo

“What is God after all? An eternal child playing an eternal game in an eternal garden.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

Thoughts and Glimpses (1916-17)

Learned Hand photo

“But the condition is that they shall be willing at least to listen to one another, to get the habit of pooling their wishes. Somehow or other they must do this, if the play is to go on; maybe it will not, but there is no Jack, in or out of the box, who can come to straighten the game.”

Learned Hand (1872–1961) American legal scholar, Court of Appeals judge

"Democracy: Its Presumptions and Realities" (1932); also in The Spirit of Liberty: Papers and Addresses (1952), p. 99 - 100.
Extra-judicial writings
Context: When I hear so much impatient and irritable complaint, so much readiness to replace what we have by guardians for us all, those supermen, evoked somewhere from the clouds, whom none have seen and none are ready to name, I lapse into a dream, as it were. I see children playing on the grass; their voices are shrill and discordant as children's are; they are restive and quarrelsome; they cannot agree to any common plan; their play annoys them; it goes poorly. And one says, let us make Jack the master; Jack knows all about it; Jack will tell us what each is to do and we shall all agree. But Jack is like all the rest; Helen is discontented with her part and Henry with his, and soon they fall again into their old state. No, the children must learn to play by themselves; there is no Jack the master. And in the end slowly and with infinite disappointment they do learn a little; they learn to forbear, to reckon with another, accept a little where they wanted much, to live and let live, to yield when they must yield; perhaps, we may hope, not to take all they can. But the condition is that they shall be willing at least to listen to one another, to get the habit of pooling their wishes. Somehow or other they must do this, if the play is to go on; maybe it will not, but there is no Jack, in or out of the box, who can come to straighten the game.

Gerard Manley Hopkins photo
Alfred, Lord Tennyson photo

“Authors—essayist, atheist, novelist, realist, rhymester, play your part,
Paint the mortal shame of nature with the living hues of art.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) British poet laureate

Source: Locksley Hall Sixty Years After (1886), Line 139

Jorge Luis Borges photo

“Whoever hears me assert that the grey cat playing just now in the yard is the same one that did jumps and tricks there five hundred years ago will think whatever he likes of me, but it is a stranger form of madness to imagine that the present-day cat is fundamentally an entirely different one.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

"A History of Eternity" in Selected Non-Fictions Vol. 1, (1999), edited by Eliot Weinberger
Context: I turn to the most promising example: the bird. The habit of flocking; smallness; similarity of traits; their ancient connection with the two twilights, the beginnings of days, and the endings; the fact of being more often heard than seen — all of this moves us to acknowledge the primacy of the species and the almost perfect nullity of individuals. Keats, entirely a stranger to error, could believe that the nightingale enchanting him was the same one Ruth heard amid the alien corn of Bethlehem in Judah; Stevenson posits a single bird that consumes the centuries: "the nightingale that devours time." Schopenhauer — impassioned, lucid Schopenhauer — provides a reason: the pure corporeal immediacy in which animals live, oblivious to death and memory. He then adds, not without a smile: Whoever hears me assert that the grey cat playing just now in the yard is the same one that did jumps and tricks there five hundred years ago will think whatever he likes of me, but it is a stranger form of madness to imagine that the present-day cat is fundamentally an entirely different one.

Noam Chomsky photo

“Naturally, any conqueror is going to play one group against another.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Keeping the Rabble in Line, January 14, 1993 (note: Reagan's role was edited http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/noamchomsky to "would be reading their ads on TV") http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Chomsky/ChomOdon_Divide.html.
Quotes 1990s, 1990-1994
Context: Naturally, any conqueror is going to play one group against another. For example, I think about 90% of the forces that the British used to control India were Indians. [... ] It was true when the American forces conquered the Philippines, killing a couple hundred thousand people. They were being helped by Philippine tribes, exploiting conflicts among local groups. There were plenty who were going to side with the conquerors. But forget the Third World, just take a look at the Nazi conquest of nice, civilized Western Europe, places like Belgium and Holland and France. Who was rounding up the Jews? Local people, often. In France they were rounding them up faster than the Nazis could handle them. The Nazis also used Jews to control Jews. If the United States was conquered by the Russians, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Elliott Abrams and the rest of them would probably be working for the invaders, sending people off to concentration camps. They're the right personality types.

John Dryden photo

“What flocks of critics hover here to-day,
As vultures wait on armies for their prey,
All gaping for the carcase of a play!”

Prologue
All for Love (1678)
Context: What flocks of critics hover here to-day,
As vultures wait on armies for their prey,
All gaping for the carcase of a play!
With croaking notes they bode some dire event,
And follow dying poets by the scent.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. photo

“The interpretation of constitutional principles must not be too literal. We must remember that the machinery of government would not work if it were not allowed a little play in its joints.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (1841–1935) United States Supreme Court justice

Writing for the Court, Bain Peanut Co. v. Pinson, 282 U.S. 499, 501 (1931).
1930s

Kumar Sangakkara photo

“Sangakkara: It's a great sport to play. It's a very special sport because it's one that's got a certain character to it that is not present in other sports. But there's also an expectation of a cricketer that is to be much more than in any other sport. So it's a great test of character for a young kid, but at the same time, it's a great skilful athletic sport that's a viable profession that gives great opportunities as long as you understand that playing this game to the best of your abilities in the most honest manner possible is what will open those doors for you.”

Kumar Sangakkara (1977) Sri Lankan cricketer

So if you're taking up the sport, take it up seriously. Have fun, enjoy it, otherwise you won't do well, but when you do get those opportunities, ensure that you leave a mark.
"Leadership, at times, is a lonely place: Kumar Sangakkara" http://www.cricbuzz.com/cricket-news/78506/leadership-at-times-is-a-lonely-place-kumar-sangakkara-former-sri-lanka-cricket-team-captain (Interview; March 9, 2016)

Casey Stengel photo

“This makes a man think. You look up and down the bench and you say to yourself, "Can't anybody here play this game?"”

Casey Stengel (1890–1975) American baseball player and coach

As quoted in Can't Anybody here Play This Game? (1963) by Jimmy Breslin; reproduced in "Rocene's Sport Jabs" by Ray Rocene, in The Missoulian (April 21, 1963), p. 11

John D. Barrow photo
Ezra Pound photo

“Without character you will
be unable to play on that instrument”

Canto XIII
The Cantos

Bob Dylan photo

“Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me.
In the jingle-jangle morning, I'll come following you.”

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

Song lyrics, Bringing It All Back Home (1965), Mr. Tambourine Man
Context: Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me.
I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to.
Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me.
In the jingle-jangle morning, I'll come following you.

“Listen, are we helpless? Are we doomed to do it again and again and again? Have we no choice but to play the Phoenix in an unending sequence of rise and fall?”

Ch 25
A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959), Fiat Voluntas Tua
Context: Listen, are we helpless? Are we doomed to do it again and again and again? Have we no choice but to play the Phoenix in an unending sequence of rise and fall? Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Carthage, Rome, the Empires of Charlemagne and the Turk: Ground to dust and plowed with salt. Spain, France, Britain, America — burned into the oblivion of the centuries. And again and again and again. Are we doomed to it, Lord, chained to the pendulum of our own mad clockwork, helpless to halt its swing? This time, it will swing us clean to oblivion, he thought.

J.M. DeMatteis photo

“All of a sudden the Unconscious Camera turns on, a movie starts playing in my head-and there it is: The Big Moment. Or the Whole Damn Story. And, in many ways, I had nothing whatsoever to do with it.”

J.M. DeMatteis (1953) comics illustrator

A Conversation With The Legendary J.M. DeMatteis! (2004)
Context: I’ve realized over the years that, with rare exceptions, most writer’s block isn’t writer’s block at all: It’s necessary time that allows the unconscious mind to do its deep work. The great “Ah-Ha!” moments don’t usually come at the keyboard. They come when I’m lying on the floor, staring into space (or banging my head against the wall in frustration). All of a sudden the Unconscious Camera turns on, a movie starts playing in my head-and there it is: The Big Moment. Or the Whole Damn Story. And, in many ways, I had nothing whatsoever to do with it.

Ty Cobb photo

“When I played ball, I didn't play for fun.”

Ty Cobb (1886–1961) American baseball player

Source: My Life In Baseball : The True Record (1961), Ch. 23 : "To Plant One Rose —", p. 280
Context: When I played ball, I didn't play for fun. To me it wasn't parchesi played under parchesi rules. Baseball is a red-blooded sport for red-blooded men. It's no pink tea, and mollycoddles had better stay out. It's a contest and everything that implies, a struggle for supremacy, a survival of the fittest. Every man in the game, from the minors on up, is not only fighting against the other side, but he's trying to hold onto his own job against those on his own bench who'd love to take it away. Why deny this? Why minimize it? Why not boldly admit it?
Many a writer has said that I was "unfair." Well, that's not my understanding of the word. When my toes were stepped on, I stepped right back.

Arthur Koestler photo

“Chemically induced hallucinations, delusions and raptures may be frightening or wonderfully gratifying; in either case they are in the nature of confidence tricks played on one's own nervous system.”

Arthur Koestler (1905–1983) Hungarian-British author and journalist

Return Trip to Nirvana from Sunday Telegraph (1967).
Context: I profoundly admire Aldous Huxley, both for his philosophy and uncompromising sincerity. But I disagree with his advocacy of 'the chemical opening of doors into the Other World', and with his belief that drugs can procure 'what Catholic theologians call a gratuitous grace'. Chemically induced hallucinations, delusions and raptures may be frightening or wonderfully gratifying; in either case they are in the nature of confidence tricks played on one's own nervous system.

Edmond Rostand photo

“Of my broad felt made lighter,
I cast my mantle broad,
And stand, poet and fighter,
To do and to record.
I bow, I draw my sword …
En garde! With steel and wit
I play you at first abord …
At the last line, I hit!”

Edmond Rostand (1868–1918) French writer

Act IV, scene 1, as translated by Getrude Hall
Cyrano de Bergerac (1897)
Context: Valvert: Villain, clod-poll, flat-foot, refuse of the earth!
Cyrano: [taking off his hat and bowing as if the Vicomte had been introducing himself] Ah? … And mine, Cyrano-Savinien-Hercule of Bergerac!
Valvert: [exasperated] Buffoon!
Cyrano: [giving a sudden cry, as if seized with a cramp] Aï! …
Valvert: [who had started toward the back, turning] What is he saying now?
Cyrano: [screwing his face as if in pain] It must have leave to stir … it has a cramp! It is bad for it to be kept still so long!
Valvert: What is the matter?
Cyrano: My rapier prickles like a foot asleep!
Valvert: [drawing] So be it!
Cyrano: I shall give you a charming little hurt!
Valvert: [contemptous] Poet!
Cyrano: Yes, a poet, … and, to such an extent, that while we fence, I will, hop!, extempore, compose you a ballade!
Valvert: A ballade?
Cyrano: I fear you do not know what that is.
Valvert: But …
Cyrano: [as if saying a lesson] The ballade is composed of three stanzas of eight lines each …
Valvert: [stamps with his feet] Oh!
Cyrano: [continuing] And an envoi of four.
Valvert: You …
Cyrano: I will with the same breath fight you and compose one. And, at the last line, I will hit you. Valvert: Indeed you will not!
Cyrano: No? … [Declaiming]
Ballade of the duel which in Burgundy house
Monsieur de Bergerac fought with a jackanape …
Valvert: And what is that, if you please?
Cyrano: That is the title.
[ … ]
Cyrano: [closing his eyes a second] Wait. I am settling upon the rhymes. There. I have them. [in declaiming, he suits the action to the word]
Of my broad felt made lighter,
I cast my mantle broad,
And stand, poet and fighter,
To do and to record.
I bow, I draw my sword …
En garde! With steel and wit
I play you at first abord …
At the last line, I hit! [They begin fencing] You should have been politer;
Where had you best be gored?
The left side or the right — ah?
Or next your azure cord?
Or where the spleen is stored?
Or in the stomach pit?
Come we to quick accord …
At the last line, I hit! You falter, you turn whiter?
You do so to afford
Your foe a rhyme in "iter"? …
You thrust at me — I ward —
And balance is restored.
Laridon! Look to your spit! …
No, you shall not be floored
Before my cue to hit! [He announces solemnly] Envoi Prince, call upon the Lord! …
I skirmish … feint a bit …
I lunge! … I keep my word!
[The Vicomte staggers, Cyrano bows. ]
At the last line, I hit!

Charles Mingus photo

“What do you think happens to a composer who is sincere and loves to write and has to wait thirty years to have someone play a piece of his music?”

Charles Mingus (1922–1979) American jazz double bassist, composer and bandleader

As quoted in Setting the Tempo : Fifty Years of Great Jazz Liner Notes (1996) by Tom Piazza. p. 339
Context: What do you think happens to a composer who is sincere and loves to write and has to wait thirty years to have someone play a piece of his music? Had I been born in a different country or had I been born white, I am sure I would have expressed my ideas long ago. Maybe they wouldn't have been as good because when people are born free — I can't imagine it, but I've got a feeling that if it's so easy for you — the struggle and the initiative are not as strong as they are for a person who has to struggle and therefore has more to say.

Marilyn Monroe photo

“Everyone's childhood plays itself out. No wonder no one knows the other or can completely understand.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

Marilyn's personal diaries (1958), as quoted in Fragments (2010), by Stanley Buchthal and Bernard Comment
Context: Everyone's childhood plays itself out. No wonder no one knows the other or can completely understand. By this I don't know if I'm just giving up with this conclusion or resigning myself — or maybe for the first time connecting with reality. How do we know the pain or another's earlier years, let alone all that he drags with him since along the way at best a lot of leeway is needed for the other — yet how much is unhealthy for one to bear. I think to love bravely is the best and accept — as much as one can bear.

Baba Hari Dass photo

“Don't think that you are carrying the whole world; make it easy. Make it play, make it a prayer.”

Baba Hari Dass (1923–2018) master yogi, author, builder, commentator of Indian spiritual tradition

Source: Ashtanga Yoga Primer, 1981, p.2

Kenneth Grahame photo

“The Mole, greatly wondering, obeyed. 'I hear nothing myself,' he said, 'but the wind playing in the reeds and rushes and osiers.'”

Source: The Wind in the Willows (1908), Ch. 7
Context: A bird piped suddenly, and was still; and a light breeze sprang up and set the reeds and bulrushes rustling. Rat, who was in the stern of the boat, while Mole sculled, sat up suddenly and listened with a passionate intentness. Mole, who with gentle strokes was just keeping the boat moving while he scanned the banks with care, looked at him with curiosity.
'It's gone!' sighed the Rat, sinking back in his seat again. 'So beautiful and strange and new. Since it was to end so soon, I almost wish I had never heard it. For it has roused a longing in me that is pain, and nothing seems worth while but just to hear that sound once more and go on listening to it for ever. No! There it is again!' he cried, alert once more. Entranced, he was silent for a long space, spellbound.
'Now it passes on and I begin to lose it,' he said presently. 'O Mole! the beauty of it! The merry bubble and joy, the thin, clear, happy call of the distant piping! Such music I never dreamed of, and the call in it is stronger even than the music is sweet! Row on, Mole, row! For the music and the call must be for us.'
The Mole, greatly wondering, obeyed. 'I hear nothing myself,' he said, 'but the wind playing in the reeds and rushes and osiers.

Ann Coulter photo

“The hatred is blinding, producing logical contradictions that would be impossible to sustain were it not for the central element faith plays in the left's new religion.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

Source: 2002, Slander : Liberal Lies About the American Right (2002), p. 254.
Context: Where there is a vacuum of ideas, paranoia slips in. Much of the left's hate speech bears greater similarity to a psychological disorder than to standard political discourse. The hatred is blinding, producing logical contradictions that would be impossible to sustain were it not for the central element faith plays in the left's new religion. The basic tenet of their faith is this: Maybe they were wrong about their facts and policies, but they are good and conservatives are evil. You almost want to give it to them. It's all they have left.

Narendra Modi photo

“But these TV channels kept on playing up the same incidents over and over again.”

Narendra Modi (1950) Prime Minister of India

2014, "Narendra Modi on the Role of NDTV during the 2002 Riots", 2014
Context: It was my endeavour that we restore peace at the earliest possible. If you look at the data you will see that in 72 hours we had put down the riots and brought the situation under control. But these TV channels kept on playing up the same incidents over and over again. At the time, Rajdeep [Sardesai] and Barkha [Dutt] were in the same channel NDTV. During those inflamed days, Barkha acted in the most irresponsible manner. Surat had not witnessed any communal killings, barring a few small incidents of clashes. However the bazaars were closed [as a precautionary measure]. Barkha stood amidst closed shops screaming "This is Surat’s diamond market, but there is not a single police man here."

E.M. Forster photo

“Tolerance, good temper and sympathy are no longer enough in a world where ignorance rules, and Science, which ought to have ruled, plays the pimp. Tolerance, good temper and sympathy — they are what matter really, and if the human race is not to collapse they must come to the front before long.”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

What I Believe (1938)
Context: I do not believe in Belief. But this is an Age of Faith, and there are so many militant creeds that, in self defence, one has to formulate a creed of one's own. Tolerance, good temper and sympathy are no longer enough in a world where ignorance rules, and Science, which ought to have ruled, plays the pimp. Tolerance, good temper and sympathy — they are what matter really, and if the human race is not to collapse they must come to the front before long.

Baba Hari Dass photo

“Without watching ourselves we can't be aware of the tricks the mind plays. So a yogi should be alert all the time.”

Baba Hari Dass (1923–2018) master yogi, author, builder, commentator of Indian spiritual tradition

Source: Silence Speaks, from the chalkboard of Baba Hari Dass, 1977, p.11

Arthur Stanley Eddington photo
R. A. Lafferty photo

“The witch has been playing a semantic trick on us.”

R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) American writer

Source: Space Chantey (1968), Ch. 6
Context: The witch has been playing a semantic trick on us. We were already pretty salty animals when we came here! It is toy animals she has turned us into. We have been working against ourselves, trying to be men again, but to be her idea of men, since we live in her context. But she does not know real animals, or men. … Be you not toys any longer! Stir up the wild business in you. You have to be real animals before you can be men.

Simone Weil photo

“Our lives are lived, in actual fact, among changing, varying realities, subject to the casual play of external necessities, and modifying themselves according to specific conditions within specific limits”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), The Power of Words (1937), p. 222
Context: There is no area in our minds reserved for superstition, such as the Greeks had in their mythology; and superstition, under cover of an abstract vocabulary, has revenged itself by invading the entire realm of thought. Our science is like a store filled with the most subtle intellectual devices for solving the most complex problems, and yet we are almost incapable of applying the elementary principles of rational thought. In every sphere, we seem to have lost the very elements of intelligence: the ideas of limit, measure, degree, proportion, relation, comparison, contingency, interdependence, interrelation of means and ends. To keep to the social level, our political universe is peopled exclusively by myths and monsters; all it contains is absolutes and abstract entities. This is illustrated by all the words of our political and social vocabulary: nation, security, capitalism, communism, fascism, order, authority, property, democracy. We never use them in phrases such as: There is democracy to the extent that... or: There is capitalism in so far as... The use of expressions like "to the extent that" is beyond our intellectual capacity. Each of these words seems to represent for us an absolute reality, unaffected by conditions, or an absolute objective, independent of methods of action, or an absolute evil; and at the same time we make all these words mean, successively or simultaneously, anything whatsoever. Our lives are lived, in actual fact, among changing, varying realities, subject to the casual play of external necessities, and modifying themselves according to specific conditions within specific limits; and yet we act and strive and sacrifice ourselves and others by reference to fixed and isolated abstractions which cannot possibly be related either to one another or to any concrete facts. In this so-called age of technicians, the only battles we know how to fight are battles against windmills.

Robert H. Jackson photo

“I shall not dissent from this consensus, nor do I deny that all these dead and missing men shared the guilt. In crimes so reprehensible that degrees of guilt have lost their significance they may have played the most evil parts.”

Robert H. Jackson (1892–1954) American judge

Summation for the Prosecution, July 26, 1946
Quotes from the Nuremberg Trials (1945-1946)
Context: These men saw no evil, spoke none, and none was uttered in their presence. This claim might sound very plausible if made by one defendant. But when we put all their stories together, the impression which emerges of the Third Reich, which was to last a thousand years, is ludicrous. If we combine only the stories of the front bench, this is the ridiculous composite picture of Hitler's Government that emerges. It was composed of:
A No. 2 man who knew nothing of the excesses of the Gestapo which he created, and never suspected the Jewish extermination programme although he was the signer of over a score of decrees which instituted the persecution of that race;
A No. 3 man who was merely an innocent middleman transmitting Hitler's orders without even reading them, like a postman or delivery boy;
A Foreign Minister who knew little of foreign affairs and nothing of foreign policy;
A Field-Marshal who issued orders to the armed forces but had no idea of the results they would have in practice …
… This may seem like a fantastic exaggeration, but this is what you would actually be obliged to conclude if you were to acquit these defendants.
They do protest too much. They deny knowing what was common knowledge. They deny knowing plans and programmes that were as public as Mein Kampf and the Party programme. They deny even knowing the contents of documents which they received and acted upon. … The defendants have been unanimous, when pressed, in shifting the blame on other men, sometimes on one and sometimes on another. But the names they have repeatedly picked are Hitler, Himmler, Heydrich, Goebbels, and Bormann. All of these are dead or missing. No matter how hard we have pressed the defendants on the stand, they have never pointed the finger at a living man as guilty. It is a temptation to ponder the wondrous workings of a fate which has left only the guilty dead and only the innocent alive. It is almost too remarkable.
The chief villain on whom blame is placed — some of the defendants vie with each other in producing appropriate epithets — is Hitler. He is the man at whom nearly every defendant has pointed an accusing finger.
I shall not dissent from this consensus, nor do I deny that all these dead and missing men shared the guilt. In crimes so reprehensible that degrees of guilt have lost their significance they may have played the most evil parts. But their guilt cannot exculpate the defendants. Hitler did not carry all responsibility to the grave with him. All the guilt is not wrapped in Himmler's shroud. It was these dead men whom these living chose to be their partners in this great conspiratorial brotherhood, and the crimes that they did together they must pay for one by one.

Robert Graves photo

“Another War soon gets begun,
A dirtier, a more glorious one;
Then, boys, you'll have to play, all in;
It's the cruellest team will win.
So hold your nose against the stink
And never stop too long to think.”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

"The Next War".
Fairies and Fusiliers (1917)
Context: Another War soon gets begun,
A dirtier, a more glorious one;
Then, boys, you'll have to play, all in;
It's the cruellest team will win.
So hold your nose against the stink
And never stop too long to think.
Wars don't change except in name;
The next one must go just the same,
And new foul tricks unguessed before
Will win and justify this War.

“A society in whose culture the Ancient Greeks played such an important part was bound to have a view about the Modern Greeks.”

William St Clair (1937) author

Source: That Greece Might Still be Free (1972), p. 15-16.
Context: A society in whose culture the Ancient Greeks played such an important part was bound to have a view about the Modern Greeks. The inhabitants of that famous land, whose language was still recognizably the same as that of Demosthenes, could not be regarded as just another remote tribe of natives or savages. Western Europe could not escape being concerned with the nature of the relationship between the Ancient and the Modem Greeks. The question has teased, perplexed, and confused generations of Greeks and Europeans and it still stirs passions to an extent difficult for the rational to condone.

Djuna Barnes photo

“The jests that lit our hours by night
And made them gay,
Soiled a sweet and ignorant soul
And fouled its play.”

Djuna Barnes (1892–1982) American Modernist writer, poet and artist

To a Cabaret Dancer
The Book of Repulsive Women (1915)
Context: p>We watched her come with subtle fire
And learned feet,
Stumbling among the lustful drunk
Yet somehow sweet. We saw the crimson leave her cheeks
Flame in her eyes;
For when a woman lives in awful haste
A woman dies. The jests that lit our hours by night
And made them gay,
Soiled a sweet and ignorant soul
And fouled its play.</p

Warren Buffett photo

“I wouldn't mind going to jail if I had three cellmates who played bridge.”

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

Quoted in The Warren Buffett Portfolio: Mastering the Power of the Focus Investment Strategy (2000), p. 112, and Think, Act, and Invest Like Warren Buffett: The Winning Strategy to Help You Achieve Your Financial and Life Goals (2012), p. 22 <!-- also in -->
Context: I wouldn't mind going to jail if I had three cellmates who played bridge. … The approach and strategies [of bridge and stock investing] are very similar. In the stock market you do not base your decisions on what the market is doing, but on what you think is rational. With bridge, you need to adhere to a disciplined bidding system. While there is no one best system, there is one that works best for you. Once you choose a system, you need to stick with it.

Mircea Eliade photo

“The History of Religions is destined to play an important role in contemporary cultural life.”

Mircea Eliade (1907–1986) Romanian historian of religion, fiction writer and philosopher

The Quest: History and Meaning in Religion (1969), p. 3.
Context: The History of Religions is destined to play an important role in contemporary cultural life. This is not only because an understanding of exotic and archaic religions will significantly assist in a cultural dialogue with the representatives of such religions. It is more especially because … the history of religions will inevitably attain to a deeper knowledge of man. It is on the basis of such knowledge that a new humanism, on a world-wide scale, could develop.

Nigel Cumberland photo

“If little kids could play more, you´d have better engineers, better managers and more inspiration in the workplace”

Nigel Cumberland (1967) British author and leadership coach

As quoted on page 56 in "Under Pressure" by Carl Honoré (2008) https://books.google.ae/books/about/Under_Pressure.html?id=l7Yq9rKivMgC&redir_esc=y and also quoted in the Vancouver Sun newspaper on April 28th 2008 http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/westcoastnews/story.html?id=60b255fc-910e-4dc1-ae6d-50961b0e7a2c and in a 2013 academic paper entitled Hard Skills Will Qualify You, with Soft Skills You’ll Rank the First by Eva Trumpesova Rudolfova, Lenka Zouhar Ludvikova of Masaryk University, Czech Republic https://is.muni.cz/repo/1169958/ECE2013_0305.pdf. Also quoted in many other sources including in Spanish.
Miscellaneous Quotes in the Press (2002-Present)
Context: If little kids could play more, you´d have better engineers, better managers and more inspiration in the workplace. If you deny a toddler the chance to play and then put him in a preschool where he is always competing and being measured, you get fear and that leads to an unwillingness to take risks. You end up with boring adults.

“Quickly would I make my path even,
And by mere playing go to heaven.”

Henry Vaughan (1621–1695) Welsh author, physician and metaphysical poet

"Childhood".
Silex Scintillans (1655)
Context: I cannot reach it, and my striving eye
Dazzles at it, as at eternity. Were now that chronicle alive,
Those white designs which children drive,
And the thoughts of each harmless hour,
With their content too in my pow'r,
Quickly would I make my path even,
And by mere playing go to heaven.

Isadora Duncan photo

“I could have played the part of Saint Joan. I ought to have played it.”

Isadora Duncan (1877–1927) American dancer and choreographer

As quoted in Isadora Duncan: An Intimate Portrait (1928) by Sewell Stokes, p. 180 http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=5M_nOS7vHGgC&pg=PA180&dq=bernard+shaw+isadora+duncan&hl=en&sa=X&ei=uwUKT7n7DIj_8QP6y5jKAQ&ved=0CDMQuwUwAA#v=onepage&q=bernard%20shaw%20isadora%20duncan&f=false
Context: I could have played the part of Saint Joan. I ought to have played it. I have the ample figure, the hardy physique of a farm-servant. Joan was a buxom creature. Yet she is always played by thin little actresses.

Alan Watts photo

“Our fate lies in your hands, to you we pray
For an indulgent hearing of our play”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

A Prologue (1939) to Oliver Goldsmith's The Good Natur'd Man (1768).
Context: Our fate lies in your hands, to you we pray
For an indulgent hearing of our play;
Laugh if you can, or failing that, give vent
In hissing fury to your discontent;
Applause we crave, from scorn we take defence
But have no armour 'gainst indifference.

James Branch Cabell photo

“Yes, there was Edgar, whom I starved and hunted until I was tired of it: then I chased him up a back alley one night, and knocked out those annoying brains of his. And there was Walt, whom I chivvied and battered from place to place, and made a paralytic of him: and him, too, I labelled offensive and lewd and lascivious and indecent. Then later there was Mark, whom I frightened into disguising himself in a clown's suit, so that nobody might suspect him to be a maker of literature: indeed, I frightened him so that he hid away the greater part of what he had made until after he was dead, and I could not get at him. That was a disgusting trick to play on me, I consider.”

James Branch Cabell (1879–1958) American author

The Judging of Jurgen (1920)
Context: In Philistia to make literature and to make trouble for yourself are synonyms,… the tumblebug explained. — I know, for already we of Philistia have been pestered by three of these makers of literature. Yes, there was Edgar, whom I starved and hunted until I was tired of it: then I chased him up a back alley one night, and knocked out those annoying brains of his. And there was Walt, whom I chivvied and battered from place to place, and made a paralytic of him: and him, too, I labelled offensive and lewd and lascivious and indecent. Then later there was Mark, whom I frightened into disguising himself in a clown's suit, so that nobody might suspect him to be a maker of literature: indeed, I frightened him so that he hid away the greater part of what he had made until after he was dead, and I could not get at him. That was a disgusting trick to play on me, I consider. Still, these are the only three detected makers of literature that have ever infested Philistia, thanks be to goodness and my vigilance, but for both of which we might have been no more free from makers of literature than are the other countries.…

P. J. O'Rourke photo
Meher Baba photo

“It is God Who acts, and God Who reacts. It is He Who scoffs, and He Who responds. He is the Creator, the Producer, the Actor and the Audience in His own Divine Play.”

Meher Baba (1894–1969) Indian mystic

"How to Love God" (12 September 1954).
General sources
Context: When I say I am the Avatar, there are a few who feel happy, some who feel shocked, and many who hearing me claim this, would take me for a hypocrite, a fraud, a supreme egoist, or just mad. If I were to say every one of you is an Avatar, a few would be tickled, and many would consider it a blasphemy or a joke. The fact that God being One, Indivisible and equally in us all, we can be nought else but one, is too much for the duality-conscious mind to accept. Yet each of us is what the other is. I know I am the Avatar in every sense of the word, and that each one of you is an Avatar in one sense or the other.
It is an unalterable and universally recognized fact since time immemorial that God knows everything, God does everything, and that nothing happens but by the Will of God. Therefore it is God who makes me say I am the Avatar, and that each one of you is an Avatar. Again, it is He Who is tickled through some, and through others is shocked. It is God Who acts, and God Who reacts. It is He Who scoffs, and He Who responds. He is the Creator, the Producer, the Actor and the Audience in His own Divine Play.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson photo

“As she fled fast through sun and shade
The happy winds upon her played,
Blowing the ringlet from the braid.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) British poet laureate

Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere

Sri Aurobindo photo

“Whatever plans we may make, we shall find quite useless when the time for action comes. Revolutions are always full of surprises, and whoever thinks he can play chess with a revolution will soon find how terrible is the grasp of God and how insignificant the human reason before the whirlwind of His breath.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

22 February 1908
India's Rebirth
Context: Whatever plans we may make, we shall find quite useless when the time for action comes. Revolutions are always full of surprises, and whoever thinks he can play chess with a revolution will soon find how terrible is the grasp of God and how insignificant the human reason before the whirlwind of His breath. That man only is likely to dominate the chances of a Revolution, who makes no plans but preserves his heart pure for the will of God to declare itself. The great rule of life is to have no schemes but one unalterable purpose. If the will is fixed on the purpose it sets itself to accomplish, then circumstances will suggest the right course; but the schemer finds himself always tripped up by the unexpected.

Bob Black photo

“An optimal sexual encounter is the paradigm of productive play. The participants potentiate each other's pleasures, nobody keeps score, and everybody wins. The more you give, the more you get.”

The Abolition of Work (1985)
Context: No one can say what would result from unleashing the creative power stultified by work. Anything can happen. The tiresome debater's problem of freedom vs. necessity, with its theological overtones, resolves itself practically once the production of use-values is co-extensive with the consumption of delightful play activity. Life will become a game, or rather many games, but not—as it is now — a zero/sum game. An optimal sexual encounter is the paradigm of productive play. The participants potentiate each other's pleasures, nobody keeps score, and everybody wins. The more you give, the more you get. In the ludic life, the best of sex will diffuse into the better part of daily life. Generalized play leads to the libidinization of life. Sex, in turn, can become less urgent and desperate, more playful.
If we play our cards right, we can all get more out of life than we put into it; but only if we play for keeps.
No one should ever work.
Workers of the world... relax! </center

Algernon Charles Swinburne photo

“These were a part of the playing I heard
Once, ere my love and my heart were at strife;
Love that sings and hath wings as a bird,
Balm of the wound and heft of the knife.”

Poems and Ballads (1866-89), The Triumph of Time
Context: p>The pulse of war and passion of wonder,
The heavens that murmur, the sounds that shine,
The stars that sing and the loves that thunder,
The music burning at heart like wine,
An armed archangel whose hands raise up
All senses mixed in the spirit's cup
Till flesh and spirit are molten in sunder —
These things are over, and no more mine. These were a part of the playing I heard
Once, ere my love and my heart were at strife;
Love that sings and hath wings as a bird,
Balm of the wound and heft of the knife.
Fairer than earth is the sea, and sleep
Than overwatching of eyes that weep,
Now time has done with his one sweet word,
The wine and leaven of lovely life.</p

Albert Hofmann photo

“If one of the two is lacking, no reality happens, no radio music plays, the picture screen remains blank.”

Albert Hofmann (1906–2008) Swiss chemist

Ch. 11 : LSD Experience and Reality http://www.psychedelic-library.org/child11.htm
LSD : My Problem Child (1980)
Context: Of greatest significance to me has been the insight that I attained as a fundamental understanding from all of my LSD experiments: what one commonly takes as "the reality," including the reality of one's own individual person, by no means signifies something fixed, but rather something that is ambiguous — that there is not only one, but that there are many realities, each comprising also a different consciousness of the ego.
One can also arrive at this insight through scientific reflections. The problem of reality is and has been from time immemorial a central concern of philosophy. It is, however, a fundamental distinction, whether one approaches the problem of reality rationally, with the logical methods of philosophy, or if one obtrudes upon this problem emotionally, through an existential experience. The first planned LSD experiment was therefore so deeply moving and alarming, because everyday reality and the ego experiencing it, which I had until then considered to be the only reality, dissolved, and an unfamiliar ego experienced another, unfamiliar reality. The problem concerning the innermost self also appeared, which, itself unmoved, was able to record these external and internal transformations.
Reality is inconceivable without an experiencing subject, without an ego. It is the product of the exterior world, of the sender and of a receiver, an ego in whose deepest self the emanations of the exterior world, registered by the antennae of the sense organs, become conscious. If one of the two is lacking, no reality happens, no radio music plays, the picture screen remains blank.

Iggy Pop photo

“I feel like God peed on all my enemies. For a long time I was very bitter that the people who controlled the means of anybody ever hearing my songs were never gonna play them.”

Iggy Pop (1947) American rock singer-songwriter, musician, and actor

Interview interview (1999)
Context: I feel like God peed on all my enemies. For a long time I was very bitter that the people who controlled the means of anybody ever hearing my songs were never gonna play them. They only favored music that I specifically and particularly hated, and I wanted them dead. Suddenly, there was another avenue. I started hearing my stuff coming out of bars and then it started to happen little by little — a movie song here or a TV ad there.

John D. Barrow photo

“The abstractions of Einstein's curved space and time gave rise to analogies and pictures that played a new explanatory role.”

John D. Barrow (1952–2020) British scientist

Cosmic Imagery: Key Images in the History of Science (2008)
Context: The abstractions of Einstein's curved space and time gave rise to analogies and pictures that played a new explanatory role. Space and time gave way to space-time, visible light was augmented by images across the rest of the electromagnetic spectrum, and we realised that we could see back towards the apparent beginnings of time.<!--part. 1, p. 8

Chester W. Nimitz photo

“The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military standpoint, in the defeat of Japan.”

Chester W. Nimitz (1885–1966) United States Navy fleet admiral

Public statement quoted in The New York Times (6 October 1945) and in The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb (1996) by Gar Alperovitz <!-- p. 329 -->
Context: The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace before the atomic age was announced to the world with the destruction of Hiroshima and before the Russian entry into war.... The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military standpoint, in the defeat of Japan.

Reza Pahlavi photo

“The regime has cleverly tried to play the nationalistic card, arguing for the nation’s sovereign rights to nuclear energy. Indeed, no one in the world has challenged Iran’s sovereign right to nuclear energy; rather it has demanded more transparency in order to demonstrate its lack of ambition beyond the peaceful use of nuclear technology. This transparency is what the regime is lacking.”

Reza Pahlavi (1960) Last crown prince of the former Imperial State of Iran

As quoted by Christoph Lehermayr, Der Sohn des Schahs spricht exklusiv mit NEWS.at: "Ich bin bereit, Konig zu werden" http://www.rezapahlavi.org/details_article.php?article=397&page=3, NEWS.at, September 15, 2009.
Interviews, 2009

Reza Pahlavi photo

“It is up to the Iranian people to say what role I should play.”

Reza Pahlavi (1960) Last crown prince of the former Imperial State of Iran

As quoted in Cnaan Liphshiz. Obama ‘chickened out’ of confronting mullahs http://www.jpost.com/LandedPages/PrintArticle.aspx?id=272989. The Jerusalem Post. July 6, 2012.
Interviews, 2012

Reza Pahlavi photo
Reza Pahlavi photo
Reza Pahlavi photo
Reza Pahlavi photo

“My preoccupation is not running for office. We are trying to liberate our country first. Then I am ready to serve my compatriots in whatever capacity. If they want me to play a more important role, so be it.”

Reza Pahlavi (1960) Last crown prince of the former Imperial State of Iran

As quoted in Iran’s Royal Opposition http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2010/02/10/iran-s-royal-opposition.html, The Daily Beast, Feb 10, 2010.
Interviews, 2010