We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing

– G. Bernard Shaw

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

– Plato

Play is the exultation of the possible

– Martin Buber

Almost all creativity involves purposeful play

– Abraham Maslow

In every man a child is hidden that wants to play

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Now in myth and ritual the great instinctive forces of civilized life have their origin: law and order, commerce and profit, craft and art, poetry, wisdom and science. All are rooted in the primeval soil of play

– Johan Huizing

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

– Joseph Chilton Pearce

Play has been man's most useful preoccupation.

– Frank Caplan

It is paradoxical that many educators and parents still differentiate between a time for learning and a time for play without seeing the vital connection between them.

– Leo F. Buscaglia

If animals play, this is because play is useful in the struggle for survival; because play practices and so perfects the skills needed in adult life.

– Susanna Miller

Play is a uniquely adaptive act, not subordinate to some other adaptive act, but with a special function of its own in human experience.

– Johan Huizinga

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 Capocchione

Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.

– Mark Twain