Quotes about playground

A collection of quotes on the topic of playground, life, play, doing.

Quotes about playground

“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

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

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

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

Game

“Oh no! Don't drag us away from Antartica and take us to the playground of the rich and famous! Not that briar patch! -Max”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: The Final Warning

“How was life before Pop-Tarts, Prozac and padded playgrounds? They ate strudel, took opium and played on the grass.”

Jennifer Michael Hecht (1965) Philosopher, poet, historian, author

Source: The Happiness Myth: The Historical Antidote to What Isn't Working Today

Life, Grass

“[In Ethiopia, ] Abeh enrolled all three of us in school, which was taught in Amharic. We spoke only Somali and Arabic, so everything was completely foreign again for a little while. It wasn't until I could communicate that I came to a startling realization: the little girls in school with me were not Muslims. They said they were Kiristaan, Christian, which in Saudi Arabia had been a hideous playground insult, meaning impure. I went bewildered to my mother, who confirmed it. Ethiopians were kufr, the very sound of the word was scornful. They drank alcohol and they didn't wash properly. They were despicable.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali book Infidel

Source: Infidel (2007), Chapter 4: Weeping Orphans and Widowed Wives

Alcohol, School, Girl, Communication

“But it is unnecessary for me to do more than mention a few of the representative forms of recreation. We all know that their name is legion, and that different tastes require different activities. I am not trying to recommend one above another, but I am trying to point out the national value which would accrue if there were an organized, instructed, and persistent effort to bring these benefits to the people at large. It can not be that our country is making a great outlay for playgrounds in our schools, for athletic fields in our colleges, for baseball fields in our cities, for recreation parks in our metropolitan districts, for State and national forest reservations, unless these all represent an opportunity for a real betterment of the life of the people. These are typically American in all their aspects. They minister directly to the welfare of all our inhabitants.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, The Democracy of Sports (1924)

Life, People, School, Effort

“I must say, in my non-strategic… ‘cuz I’m under attack all the time, if you see it on Twitter. The [unclear] call me gay, it’s just, they’re vicious, there are death threats, and everything. And so, there are times where I’m not thinking as clearly as I should, and in those unclear moments, I always think to myself, ‘Fire the first shot.’Bring it on. Because I know who’s on our side. They can only win a rhetorical and propaganda war. They cannot win. We outnumber them in this country, and we have the guns. [laughter] I’m not kidding. They talk a mean game, but they will not cross that line because they know what they’re dealing with.And I have people who come up to me in the military, major named people in the military, who grab me and they go, ‘Thank you for what you’re doing, we’ve got your back.’They understand that. These are the unspoken things we know, they know. They know who’s on their side, they’ve got Janeane Garofalo, we are freaked out by that. When push comes to shove, they know who’s on our side. They are the bullies on the playground, and they’re starting to realize, what if we were to fight back, what if we were to slap back?”

Andrew Breitbart (1969–2012) American writer and publisher

Speaking to a Massachusetts tea party group http://www.mediaite.com/online/andrew-breitbart-to-tea-partiers-we-outnumber-liberals-and-we-have-the-guns/ (September 16, 2011)

Death, War, People, Game

“The digital playground is an incredibly cruel playground.”

Gordon Neufeld (1947) Canadian psychologist

The Keys to Well-being in Students, Presentation to the X NIS International Conference, Astana, Kazakhstan, 26 October 2017 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8hG_p7sujU)

“As the only black kid in my primary school playground, animals had become my friends. By 15 I was vegan, although I didn't give up honey until 16. For a while my mother thought it was just "a rasta phase". … I can honestly say I've not been tempted to give up veganism in 27 years. I sometimes smell a chip shop and like the smell but then feel guilty because fish might be part of it. But I'll go home and make vegan chips. After all these years, my favourite food is my mother's butter bean stew with whole potatoes, yam and dasheen. I don't think I've ever made a meal for her, to be honest. I think she would consider it a failing of her motherhood and say "Boy, get out the kitchen."”

Benjamin Zephaniah (1958) English poet and author

"Interview: Benjamin Zephaniah" by John Hind, TheGuardian.com (18 July 2010) https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/jul/18/benjamin-zephaniah-life-on-a-plate.

School, Food, Feeling, Home

“The Paleolithic hunters who painted the unsurpassed animal murals on the ceiling of the cave at Altamira had only rudimentary tools. Art is older than production for use, and play older than work. Man was shaped less by what he had to do than by what he did in playful moments. It is the child in man that is the source of his uniqueness and creativeness, and the playground is the optimal milieu for the unfolding of his capacities.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Source: Reflections on the Human Condition (1973), p. 20

Art, Optimism, Animals, Painting

“The idea that this world is a playground instead of a battleground has now been accepted in practice by the vast majority of Christians. They are facing Christ and the world. …The ‘worship’ growing out of such a view of life is as far off center as the view itself—a sort of sanctified nightclub without the champagne and the dressed-up drunks.”

Aiden Wilson Tozer (1897–1963) American missionary

This World: Playground or Battleground? pp. 5-6

Life, World, Idea, Christ

“The history of childhood is a nightmare from which we have only recently begun to awaken. The further back in history one goes, the lower the level of child care, and the more likely children are to be killed, abandoned, beaten, terrorized, and sexually abused. It is our task here to see how much of this childhood history can be recaptured from the evidence that remains to us. That this pattern has not previously been noticed by historians is because serious history has long been considered a record of public not private events. Historians have concentrated so much on the noisy sand-box of history, with its fantastic castles and magnificent battles, that they have generally ignored what is going on in the homes around the playground. And where historians usually look to the sandbox battles of yesterday for the causes of those of today, we instead ask how each generation of parents and children creates those issues which are later acted out in the arena of public life.”

Lloyd deMause (1931) American thinker

Source: The History of Childhood (1974), Ch. 1, The Evolution of Childrearing, opening paragraph.

Life, Children, Home, History

“Why do you cry when you know how the story ends?

How can you laugh when you know that it hurts your friends?

We've all been there once but you never left

This is me coming back to get you out

To say goodbye to make amends

I'm not leaving this place

Unless I'm leaving with you

'Cos you're the only person with a half decent heart here

And I know you will put it to use

Me and Mr. Dylan on the ride home

We had a heart to heart about life

But neither him or me could decide for ourselves if we wanted to outlive that night

Like two children on the playground of the unconfessed souls

Abandoned by our mothers and our lovers and our foes

If only we were brave enough to live the lives we stole

What a wonderful world this could be!

So how many more examples until we break?

So how many sacrifices must we make?

Because we've all been there once before

And it looks like we've returned once more

So is this the beginning or the end?”

Tomas Kalnoky (1980) American musician

"The Big Sleep" from "Everything Goes Numb" (2003) http://risc.perix.co.uk/lyrics/sm/egn/12/

Life, Children, World, Home

“Always a playground instructor, never a Killer”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

An American Prayer (1978)

“Where do babies come from? Don't bother asking adults. They lie like pigs. However, diligent independent research and hours of playground consultation have yielded fruitful, if tentative, results. There are several theories. Near as we can figure out, it has something to do with acting ridiculous in the dark. We believe it is similar to dogs when they act peculiar and ride each other. This is called "making love". Careful study of popular song lyrics, advertising catch-lines, TV sitcoms, movies, and T-Shirt inscriptions offers us significant clues as to its nature. Apparently it makes grown-ups insipid and insane. Some graffiti was once observed that said "sex is good."”

Matt Groening (1954) American cartoonist

All available evidence, however, points to the contrary.
Bongo in Childhood Is Hell (1988)

Love, Lie, Making love, Dogs

“You went around back, where in the playground kids were dangling from the jungle gym waiting for mothers; connie could feel their cold skinned knees and barked knuckles–Bunce always said that imagining pain and discomfort was worse for her than the real thing when it came, which it almost never did.”

John Crowley book Four Freedoms

Part Three, Chapter 1
Four Freedoms (2009)

Pain, Feeling, Imagination, Waiting

“I try to keep it positive and play it cool, shoot up the playground and tell the kids to stay in school.”

Eminem (1972) American rapper and actor

"I'm Shady" (Track 18).
1990s, The Slim Shady LP (1999)

School

“Picture yourself when you were five. In fact, dig out a photo of little you at that time and tape it to your mirror. How would you treat her, love her, feed her? How would you nurture her if you were the mother of little you? I bet you would protect her fiercely while giving her space to spread her itty-bitty wings. She'd get naps, healthy food, imagination time, and adventures into the wild. If playground bullies hurt her feelings, you'd hug her tears away and give her perspective. When tantrums or meltdowns turned her into a poltergeist, you'd demand a loving time-out in the naughty chair. From this day forward I want you to extend the same compassion to your adult self.”

Kris Carr (1971) American actress and filmmaker

Source: Crazy Sexy Diet (2011), Ch. 7

Love, Food, Feeling, Imagination

“Muslims are hardly welcome to pick up the trash on Europe's playgrounds. Don't let Europe's current round of playing pacifist dress up fool you: This is the continent that perfected genocide and ethnic cleansing, the happy-go-lucky slice of humanity that brought us such recent hits as the Holocaust and Srebenica.”

Ralph Peters (1952) American military officer, writer, pundit

Source: 2000s, Wars of Blood and Faith: The Conflicts That Will Shape the Twenty-First Century (2007), p. 332

Fools, Perfection, Happiness

“The Pumpkins love rock-and-roll, we absolutely love it, but we also think it's a flatulent, ego-serving kiddie playground. You can have your cake and eat it too.”

Billy Corgan (1967) American musician, songwriter, producer, and author

"Out on a Limb." Details Magazine. October 1996.

Love, Thinking

“Nearly every city is making large appropriations for laying out spacious parks and playgrounds. These are providing recreation fields for the playing of outdoor games by both old and young. Golf courses and tennis courts abound. Too much emphasis can not be placed on the effort to get the children out of the alleys and off the streets into spacious open places where there is good sunlight and plenty of fresh air. Such an opportunity has both a physical and mental effect. It restores the natural balance of life and nourishes the moral fiber of youth.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, The Democracy of Sports (1924)

Life, Children, Youth, Game

“When this old world gets me down and there's no love to be found
I close my eyes and soon I find I'm in a playground in my mind
Where the children laugh and the children play
And we sing a song all day.”

Paul Vance (1929) American record producer

Song "Playground In My Mind" (1973)

Love, Children, World, Singing

“Although my view is a world-wide one and my area of observation is Europe, the nation closest to my heart is, understandably, my homeland. And it is a fortunate coincidence, fortunate in terms of the explanation of the world, that it is this country which is the clearest example of the playground of destructive development in the whole world.”

Pentti Linkola (1932) Finnish ecologist

Introduction, to Can Life Prevail? (2004) ISBN 978-1-907166-00-6

World, Understanding, Heart, Country

“An ideological movement is a collection of people many of whom could hardly bake a cake, fix a car, sustain a friendship or a marriage, or even do a quadratic equation, yet they believe they know how to rule the world. The university, in which it is possible to combine theoretical pretension with comprehensive ineptitude, has become the natural habitat of the ideological enthusiast. A kind of adventure playground, carefully insulated from reality in order to prevent absent-minded professors from bumping into things as they explore transcendental realms, has become the institutional base for civilizational self-hatred.”

Kenneth Minogue (1930–2013) Australian political theorist

Kenneth Minogue in National Review, November 18, 1991, cited in: fortnightlyreview.co.uk http://fortnightlyreview.co.uk/2013/07/quick-define-quadratic-equation/, 2013/07

Friendship, Marriage, People, World

“My father would take me to the playground, and put me on mood swings.”

Jay London (1966) American comedian

One-liners

Mood

“When we think of the crowded tenements, with hard asphalt pavements and never a blade of grass or a tree; of the ghettos and colonies in cities; of the unsightly industrial towns; of the labor shacks along our great construction works; of the derailed box cars; of the immigrant section across the railroad track; of the small towns without parks or playgrounds or music or books; and then turn to the villages from which most of the immigrants come friendly in their associations and restful in their relationship to the wider life outside the longing of the immigrant to return is understood. Even the crowded cities of their native countries have places where one may rest the spirit and satisfy the hunger for beauty, by the expenditure of a carfare or the effort of a short walk. The grim beauty of our cities, their vitality, their ambition and determination, and that crude joy of living through which many currents of our life flow, will not always keep the immigrants from returning even to the poverty of some of their native towns.”

Frances Kellor (1873–1952) American sociologist

What is Americanization? (1919)

Life, Hunger, Books, Beauty

“Lack of verifiability was a paranoiac’s playground paradise.”

Malcolm Azania book From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain

Source: From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain (2007), Chapter 7 “Who Are You, Really? Secret Origins and Secret Shames” (p. 192)

“I genuinely believe that the Catholic church is not, to put it at its mildest, a force for good in the world… We certainly don’t need the stigmatisation, the victimisation that leads to the playground bullying when people say: “You’re a disordered, morally evil individual.””

Stephen Fry (1957) English comedian, actor, writer, presenter, and activist

That’s not nice, it isn’t nice.
"The Catholic church is a force for good in the world", November 7th 2009, Abridged Intelligence² debate speech.
2000s

People, World, Evil

“Throughout our history we have been challenged to armed conflict by nations which sought to destroy our independence or threatened our freedom. The young men of America have risen to those occasions, giving themselves freely to the rigors and hardships of warfare. But the stamina and strength which the defense of liberty requires are not the product of a few weeks' basic training or a month's conditioning. These only come from bodies which have been conditioned by a lifetime of participation in sports and interest in physical activity. Our struggles against aggressors throughout our history have been won on the playgrounds and corner lots and fields of America. Thus, in a very real and immediate sense, our growing softness, our increasing lack of physical fitness, is a menace to our security.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1960, Sport at the New Frontier: The Soft American

Men, History, Sense, Sport

“We are not interested in excommunicating anyone. The game of sociology goes on in a spacious playground. We are just describing a little more closely those we would like to tempt to join our game.”

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

Source: Invitation to Sociology (1963), Chapter 1

Game

“Years ago, I had an experience with a playground bully. (…) This bully was after me and he was gonna do this, he was gonna do that, all the other kids were terrified of this bully. And he came to me one night, just before immediately the school was over, and he said to me "Icke, I'm beating you up tonight, you're gonna meet me here." And he expected me to run. And I said "alright", and I took him on. I never threw a punch! He was trying to hit me and trying to hit me, and I was just, you know, a bit like Neo in The Matrix, only at normal speed. Cause he was all front! He was all front! His power in that playground perception of his power. Look him in the eye, "come on then, let's have ya", gone. Finished! Over! And that night, his power of that playground disappeared, cause people realized he was a fraud as the word got out.”

David Icke (1952) English writer and public speaker

Source: Icke's 2016 interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkcqBQyCVD8 on the Richie Allen Show (starts at 01:39:49)

People, School, Fraud, Speed

“I've been fascinated by music for as long as I can remember. I was the kid on the playground in the third grade who would tell other kids about Paul Simon or Depeche Mode.”

Josh Groban (1981) American musician and actor

Kansas City Star, 08/16/04

Music

“Riding the crest, I diversified, exploiting a highly marketable capacity to fart at will… By mastering this skill I set myself on a par with those court jesters of old who could wow the monarch and all his retinue with a simultaneous leap, whistle and fart. Unable to extend my neo-Homeric story-telling activities from the playground to the classroom, I could nevertheless continue to hog the limelight by interpolating a gaseous running commentary while the teacher addressed himself to the blackboard.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

Source: Memoirs, Unreliable Memoirs (1980), p. 105

Teachers

“The editorial page played streams of invective across the provincial political scene like a fire hose. Harangues, pitted with epithets. Gammy bird was a hard bite. Looked life right in its shifty, bloodshot eye. A tough little paper. Gave Quoyle an uneasy feeling, the feeling of standing on a playground watching others play games whose rules he didn't know.”

Annie Proulx book The Shipping News

Source: The Shipping News (1993), P. 63

Life, Feeling, Game, Bird

“I didnt at first because horror movies scared me too much, but I really do love the genre and its a playground where you can really be artistic and create ideas in the minds of the audience and portray the unreal. Its very cool experimentation ground for a filmmaker.”

Sam Raimi (1959) American film director, producer, writer and actor

Interview: Sam Raimi on ASH VS. EVIL DEAD, DARKMAN and THE LAST OF US https://www.comingsoon.net/horror/news/747524-interview-sam-raimi-ash-vs-evil-dead-darkman-last-us#/slide/1 (October 26, 2015)

Love, Idea

“His name was Howard, but by the way he said it, none of us were able to figure out what his name was for the first few days. Still, I liked him, so one day I tackled him out on the playground and we started wrestling on the grass.”

Victor Villaseñor (1940) American writer

Burro Genius: A Memoir (2004)

Way, Grass

“I've seen the argument saying, 'Well, these are private companies, Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and whatever. They have the right to ban whoever they want, they can set their own rules they should just make up rules to get rid of Alex Jones.' It seems pretty fair, right? Their playground, their rules. I also, kind of disagree. I think that social media has grown so big that it's become an extension of your voice, that if you are not on social media, and you are taken off of social media in a way that isn't really specified why, then it can be seen as a way of censorship.”

PewDiePie (1989) Swedish YouTuber and video game commentator

NINJA RESPECTS ALL WOMANS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rv8UnA_1Os8 (15 August 2018) <br class="br">2018, NINJA RESPECTS ALL WOMANS

Way, Thinking

“The damp packed earth beneath the magnolias was our playground, but even when I was small I watched the middle distance, as if my destiny might arise from the grooved line where the mangroves met the sky. Sometimes a pelican would appear out of the haze, six horizontal feet of pterodactyl in an effortless glissade, cruising just above the treetops, riding down the long, drawn-out minutes of the morning.”

Andrea Lewis (writer) Microsoft employee

"Rancho Cielito" Ontario Review, No. 65, (Fall/Winter, 2006-07)
2000-09

Appearance

“There is and will be rousing language to keep citizens armed and arming; slaughtered and slaughtering in the malls, courthouses, post offices, playgrounds, bedrooms and boulevards; stirring, memorializing language to mask the pity and waste of needless death. There will be more diplomatic language to countenance rape, torture, assassination.”

Toni Morrison (1931–2019) American writer

Nobel Prize Lecture (1993)
Context: There is and will be rousing language to keep citizens armed and arming; slaughtered and slaughtering in the malls, courthouses, post offices, playgrounds, bedrooms and boulevards; stirring, memorializing language to mask the pity and waste of needless death. There will be more diplomatic language to countenance rape, torture, assassination. There is and will be more seductive, mutant language designed to throttle women, to pack their throats like paté-producing geese with their own unsayable, transgressive words; there will be more of the language of surveillance disguised as research; of politics and history calculated to render the suffering of millions mute; language glamorized to thrill the dissatisfied and bereft into assaulting their neighbors; arrogant pseudo-empirical language crafted to lock creative people into cages of inferiority and hopelessness.

Death, Memory

“It is not only possible to say a great deal in praise of play; it is really possible to say the highest things in praise of it. It might reasonably be maintained that the true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground.”

G. K. Chesterton book All Things Considered

"Oxford from Without"
All Things Considered (1908)
Context: It is not only possible to say a great deal in praise of play; it is really possible to say the highest things in praise of it. It might reasonably be maintained that the true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground. To be at last in such secure innocence that one can juggle with the universe and the stars, to be so good that one can treat everything as a joke — that may be, perhaps, the real end and final holiday of human souls.

Life

“In fact, of course, science is an unparalleled playground of the imagination”

Daniel Dennett (1942) American philosopher

"Reflections on 'A Conversation With Einstein's Brain'" in The Mind's I (1981), edited by Douglas R. Hofstadter and Daniel C. Dennett
Context: In fact, of course, science is an unparalleled playground of the imagination, populated by unlikely characters with wonderful names (messenger RNA, black holes, quarks) and capable of performing the most amazing deeds: sub-atomic whirling dervishes that can be in several places — everywhere and nowhere — at the same time; molecular hoop-snakes biting their own tails; self-copying spiral staircases bearing coded instructions; miniature keys searching for the locks in which they fit, on floating odysseys in a trillion synaptic gulfs.

Imagination, Science

“While recess provides the playground in which bullying may be found, it is also the laboratory for reducing bullying.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: The Boy Crisis (2018), pp. 311

Benjamin Zephaniah (1958) English poet and author

… I can honestly say I've not been tempted to give up veganism in 27 years. I sometimes smell a chip shop and like the smell but then feel guilty because fish might be part of it. But I'll go home and make vegan chips. After all these years, my favourite food is my mother's butter bean stew with whole potatoes, yam and dasheen. I don't think I've ever made a meal for her, to be honest. I think she would consider it a failing of her motherhood and say "Boy, get out the kitchen." <br class="br"> "Interview: Benjamin Zephaniah" by John Hind, TheGuardian.com (18 July 2010) https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/jul/18/benjamin-zephaniah-life-on-a-plate

School, Animals

“Consistency is the playground of dull minds.”

Yuval Noah Harari Sapiens

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“The hospital is a playground for doctors.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“People who have children have the best work-avoidance excuses in the world. If you don't have kids, get some immediately. The playgrounds are full of them.”

Scott Adams (1957) cartoonist, writer

Source: Books, Dilbert and the Way of the Weasel (2002)

Children, People, World