Play Quotes

Play is our brain’s favorite way of learning.
Dianne Ackerman

…play produces feelings of pleasure which help you escape from two major creativity killers – stress and self-consciousness.
Jordan Ayan

Whoever wants to understand much must play much.
Gottfried Bern

Play keeps us fit physically and mentally.
Stuart Brown

Play is the exultation of the possible.
Martin Buber

The master of the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which; he simply pursues his vision of excellence in whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he is always doing both.
Buddha

Live and work but do not forget to play, to have fun in life and really enjoy it.
Eileen Caddy

As adults we have quite a bit of work to do, and play seems to function as a protective mechanism against the costs of this work; a buffer against stress, a support during life transitions, a means of forming bonds and alliances, a jump start for creativity and problem-solving.
Christine Caldwell

What we really want to do is what we are really meant to do. When we do what we are meant to do, money comes to us, doors open for us, we feel useful, and the work we do feels like play to us.
Julia Cameron

Play keeps us vital and alive. It gives us an enthusiasm for life that is irreplaceable. Without it, life just doesn’t taste good.
Lucia Capacchione

Play has been man’s most useful preoccupation.
Frank Caplan

All creative people are kids at heart. You’ve got to play – do stuff that’s definitely not work to get off the linear approach to creative work. I keep yo-yos in my office and I play solitaire on my computer.
Steve Carmichael

To truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain, and play with it!
Charlie Chaplin

The true object of all human life is play.
G.K. Chesterton

If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play.
John Cleese

Life is playfulness…We need to play so that we can rediscover the magic all around us.
Flora Colao

Creative individuals tend to be smart, yet also naïve at the same time… Creative individuals have a combination of playfulness and discipline, or responsibility and irresponsibility.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Anything on earth you want to do is play. Anything on earth you have to do is work. Play will never kill you, work will. I have never worked a day in my life.
Dr. Leila Denmark (100+, America’s oldest practicing physician)

Humor is the instinct for taking pain playfully.
Max Eastman

Laughter puts your brain, your central nervous system and your whole being into a state of free play.
Max Eastman

Play is the highest form of research.
Albert Einstein

To stimulate creativity, one must develop the childlike inclination for play and the childlike desire for recognition.
Albert Einstein

It is a happy talent to know how to play.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Work and play are the same. When you’re following your energy and doing what you want all the time, the distinction between work and play dissolves.
Shakti Gawain

The human urge to create comes from the play impulse.
Carla Hannaford

Always leave enough time in your life to do something that makes you happy, satisfied, even joyous. That has more of an effect on economic well-being than any other single factor.
Paul Hawken

Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play.
Heraclitus

Most people are much more unusual and complicated and eccentric and playful and creative than they have time to express.
Oliver Herring

Play with life, laugh with life, dance lightly with life, and smile at the riddles of life, knowing that life's only true lessons are writ small in the margin.
Jonathan Lochwood Huie

We live in an ironic society where even play is turned into work. But the highest existence is not work; the highest level of existence is play.
Conrad Hyers

Children need the freedom and time to play. Play is not a luxury. Play is a necessity.
Kay Renfield Jamison

Just play. Have fun. Enjoy the game.
Michael Jordan

The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with objects it loves.
Carl Jung

Play is one of the highest spiritual forms of being. When we're in that state, we get lost in ourselves, which allows the mind to receive the message of the spirit.
Ellie Katz

Playology is about waking up our senses, infusing our organs of seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, tasting - and the higher cognitive senses as well, with the spirit of play. Play ignites creativity and spontaneity. Playing together leads to trust and cooperation.
Ellie Katz

Your brain controls how you feel. It’s the biggest playground in the world. What we think and feel creates secretions from the brain which in turn cause biochemical changes throughout the body. When we laugh and play, our body releases endorphins, the body's natural opiates.
Ellie Katz

Almost all creativity involves purposeful play.
Abraham Maslow

All changes, even positive ones, are scary. Attempts to reach goals through radical or revolutionary means often fail because they heighten fear. But the small steps of kaizen disarm the brain’s fear response, stimulating rational thought and creative play.
Robert Maurer

Can you imagine experiencing the world as a great sandbox given for us to play in like we did as children? As we play, we can also open ourselves to the exploration of our edges, always creating new adventures of self-exploration as we let go of old out-dated beliefs about ourselves.
Judith-Annette Milburn

You've got to keep the child alive; you can't create without it.
Joni Mitchell

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.
John Muir

Creative work is play. It is free speculation using materials of ones chosen form.
Stephen Nachmanovitch

The noun of self becomes a verb. This flashpoint of creation in the present moment is where work and play merge.
Stephen Nachmanovitch

In the true man there is a child concealed – who wants to play.
Friedrich Nietzsche

The struggle of maturity is to recover the seriousness of a child at play.
Friedrich Neitzsche

Play is the only way the highest intelligence of humankind can unfold.
Joseph Chilton Pierce

Do not…keep children to their studies by compulsion but by play.
Plato

The most effective kind of education is that a child should play amongst lovely things.
Plato

You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.
Plato

In the garden of your days cultivate festivity, play and celebrations.
Mary Anne Radmacher

Live with intention. Walk to the edge. Listen hard. Practice wellness. Play with abandon. Laugh. Choose with no regret. Appreciate your friends. Continue to learn. Do what you love. Live as if this is all there is.
Mary Anne Radmacher

To play is to yield oneself to a kind of magic.
Hugo Rahner

It’s not that you won or lost…but how you played the game.
Grantland Rice

Life is a challenge, meet it! Life is a dream, realize it! Life is a game, play it! Life is love, enjoy it!
Sathya Sai Baba

Plant impossible gardens. Look forward to dreams. Cry during movies. Swing as high as you can on a swing set, by moonlight. Cultivate moods. Do it for love. Take lots of naps. Take moon baths. Giggle with children. Listen to old people. Entertain your inner child. Build a fort with blankets. Get wet. Hug trees. Write love letters.
SARK

We are never more fully alive, more completely ourselves, or more deeply engrossed in anything than when we are playing.
Charles Schaefer

Serious play is not an oxymoron; it is the essence of innovation.
Michael Schrage

If you never did you should. These things are fun and fun is good.
Dr. Seuss

We don’t stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing.
George Bernard Shaw

Creativity is…seeing something that doesn’t exist already. You need to find out how you can bring it into being and that way be a playmate with God.
Michele Shea

The opposite of play is not work. It’s depression.
Brian Sutton-Smith

Play brings joy. And it’s vital for problem solving, creativity and relationships.
Margarita Tartakovsky

What work I have done I have done because it has been play. If it had been work I shouldn’t have done it. Who was it who said, Blessed is the man who has found his work? Whoever it was he had the right idea in his mind. Mark you, he says his work—not somebody else’s work. The work that is really a man’s own work is play and not work at all. Cursed is the man who has found some other man’s work and cannot lose it. When we talk about the great workers of the world we really mean the great players of the world. The fellows who groan and sweat under the weary load of toil that they bear never can hope to do anything great. How can they when their souls are in a ferment of revolt against the employment of their hands and brains? The product of slavery, intellectual or physical, can never be great.
Mark Twain

Life is like a game of chess…there are many moves possible, but each move determines your next move…where you wind up is the sum total of all your past moves…but first you have to make some kind of move.
Mort Walker

It is essential to our well-being, and to our lives, that we play and enjoy life.
Marcia Wieder