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• Play: Engage in activity for enjoyment and recreation rather than a serious or practical purpose.  Oxford Dictionary
• Play: When you play, especially as a child, you spend time doing an enjoyable and / or entertaining activity. Cambridge Dictionary
• Play: To exercise or employ oneself in diversion, amusement, or recreation.  Dictionary.com
• The real joy of life is in its play. Play is anything we do for the joy and love of doing it, apart from any profit, compulsion, or sense of duty.  It is the real living of life with the feeling of freedom and self-expression.  Play is the business of childhood, and its continuation in later years is the prolongation of youth.  Walter Rauschenbusch
• Nurture your inner child,  Fun,  Enjoyment,  Work

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Play is seen as the antithesis of work

• If I get to pick what I want to do, then it’s play. . . if someone else tells me that I have to do it, then it’s work. Patricia Nourot
• Why is play so elusive for some grown-ups? Because we are so strongly attracted and attached to a profoundly goal-oriented, work-ethic-driven society.  Like other forms of non-work, play connotes wastefulness, a stoppage in the way of what needs to get done.  Yet often what really needs to get done has more to do with our hearts and spirits and less to do with a deadline or longstanding project.  Play beckons to us, urging us to live in the present moment, a moment that becomes more luminous when we disallow interruptions like work and worry.  Leslie Levine
• Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. Mark Twain
• Work

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Some advocate not mixing work and play

• Everybody has heard the phrase “Work hard, play hard.” But I tell my teams “Work hard, play hard.  Don’t get the two confused and move quickly from one to the other.”  The difference is subtle, but I believe it’s crucial for success.  I think the biggest mistake people make is they waste time and happiness by mixing work and play.  Impatience causes all of us to want want to find an immediate conclusion instead of inching our way towards perfection. This often leads us to wish we were playing when we’re working, and on the flipside, worrying about work when we’re playing.  In this way, we fail to get the most out of or enjoy either of them.  Bill Resler
• When you work, work. When you play, play. Don’t mix the two. Jim Rohn
• Work and play can be the same. When you are following your energy and doing what you want to do all the time, the distinction between work and play dissolves. Work is no longer what you have to do, and play what you want to do. When you are doing what you love, you may work harder and produce more than ever before, because you are having fun.  Shakti Gawain

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The difference between work and play is only attitude

• The difference between work and play is only a matter of attitude. Work, fully done, is play. Gerald G. May
• There is work that is work and there is play that is play; there is play that is work and work that is play. And in only one of these lies happiness. Gelett Burgess
• Work and play are words used to describe the same thing under differing conditions. Mark Twain
• The very essence of playfulness is an openness to anything that may happen, the feeling that whatever happens, it’s okay… you’re either free to play, or you’re not. John Cleese
• Attitude

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The supreme achievement is to blur work and play

• The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play. Arnold J. Toynbee
• The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he’s always doing both. James A. Michener
• Make your work your play and your play your work. Phil Jackson
• You’ve achieved success in your field when you don’t know whether what you’re doing is work or play. James Beatty

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Play ignites creativity

• Almost all creativity involves purposeful play. Abraham Maslow
• The human urge to create comes from the play impulse. Carla Hannaford
• Creative individuals place a high value on fun because it enables them to soar in their other pursuits. Jordan Ayan
• The noun of self becomes a verb. This flashpoint of creation in the present moment is where work and play merge. Stephen Nachmanovitch
• 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
• Necessity may be the mother of invention, but play is certainly the father. Roger von Oech
• A person might be able to play without being creative, but he sure can’t be creative without playing. Kurt Hanks and Jay Parry
• To stimulate creativity, one must develop the childlike inclination for play and the childlike desire for recognition. Albert Einstein
• The most potent muse of all is our own inner child. Stephen Nachmanovitch
• 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 the objects it loves. Carl Jung
• If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play. John Cleese
• Combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought. Albert Einstein
• Creation, after all, is only play. Stephen C. Paul
• The ability to play is essential to being a creative artist. Dewitt Jones
• Serious play is not an oxymoron; it is the essence of innovation. Michael Schrage
• Creative work is play. It is free speculation using materials of ones chosen form. Stephen Nachmanovitch
• The creative mind plays with the object it loves. Carl Jung
• It is in playing and only in playing that the individual child or adult is able to be creative and to use the whole personality, and it is only in being creative that the individual discovers the self. Donald Woods Winnicott
• Creative people are curious, flexible, persistent, and independent with a tremendous spirit of adventure and a love of play. Henri Matisse
• Without the playing with fantasy no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable. Carl Jung
• Creativity

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Play kindles pleasure, energy and enthusiasm

• 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
• We are never more fully alive, more completely ourselves, or more deeply engrossed in anything than when we are playing. Charles Schaefer
• When we laugh and play, our body releases endorphins, the body’s natural opiates. Ellie Katz
• Play produces feelings of pleasure which help you escape from two major creativity killers – stress and self- consciousness. Jordan Ayan
• The opposite of play is not work. It’s depression.  Brian Sutton-Smith
• Genuine play occurs when you lose sight of yourself and your life for the moment. You are totally immersed in whatever physical or creative activity with no awareness of the passing of time.  You are truly awake and alive.  For some people, play may be more physical.  For others, it is a creative outlet for expression.  However, both types of play can satisfy our basic need for curiosity, exploration, and fun. Jill Murphy Long
• Play becomes joy, joy becomes work, work becomes play. Johannes Itten
• Pleasure,  Energy management,  Enthusiasm,  Passion

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Play aids learning and discovery

• Play is our brain’s favorite way of learning. Dianne Ackerman
• You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation. Plato
• Play is the highest form of research. Albert Einstein
• 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 Buscaglia
• Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood. Fred Rogers
• Play is the beginning of knowledge. George Dorsey
• There are children playing in the street who could solve some of my top problems in physics, because they have modes of sensory perception that I lost long ago. Robert Oppenheimer
• Whoever wants to understand much must play much. Gottfried Benn
• Play gives children a chance to practice what they are learning…They have to play with what they know to be true in order to find out more, and then they can use what they learn in new forms of play. Fred Rogers
• Play stimulates the parts of the brain involved in both careful, logical reasoning and carefree, unbound exploration. Greg McKeown
• Learning,  Discovery

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Play boosts productivity

• Combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought. Albert Einstein
• That’s right, you can be more productive if you play more! Neil Fiore
• Productivity

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Play can lead to mastery

• Play is your route to mastery. Sara Genn
• The playing adult steps sideward into another reality; the playing child advances forward to new stages of mastery. Erik Erikson
• Mastery

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Play brings enlightenment, wisdom and even genius

• They are enlightened who join in this play knowing it as play, for people suffer only because they take as serious what the gods made for fun. Alan Watts
• Play is the only way the highest intelligence of humankind can unfold. Joseph Chilton Pierce
• 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
• There is wisdom in knowing how to play, to touch lightly, uninvolved and uncommitted, on what is pleasurable. Aelred Graham
• Does it not appear to you, versatility is the true and rare characteristic of that rare thing called genius–versatility and playfulness? In my mind they are both essential.  Mary Russell Mitford
• Whoever wants to understand much must play much. Gottfried Benn
• Enlightenment,  Wisdom,  Genius

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Playing keeps us healthy and young

• Play keeps us fit physically and mentally. Stuart Brown
• Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing. Oliver Wendell Holmes
• Health,  Staying young at heart

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Play opens up possibility and progress

• Play is the exultation of the possible. Martin Buber
• To be playful is not to be trivial or frivolous, or to act as though nothing of consequence will happen. On the contrary, when we are playful with each other we relate as free persons, and the relationship is open to surprise; everything that happens is of consequence.  It is, in fact, seriousness that closes itself to consequence, for seriousness is a dread of the unpredictable outcome of open possibility.  To be serious is to press for a specified conclusion.  To be playful is to allow for possibility whatever the cost to oneself.  James Carse
• Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature. Tom Robbins
• Possibility,  Progress

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Play is the antidote to excessive seriousness …

• Good work and joyous play go hand in hand. When play stops, old age begins.  Play keeps you from taking life too seriously. George Byron
• They are enlightened who join in this play knowing it as play, for people suffer only because they take as serious what the gods made for fun. Alan Watts
• Play not only keeps us young but also maintains our perspective about the relative seriousness of things. Running is play, for even if we try hard to do well at it, it is a relief from every day cares.  Jim Fixx
• Laughter puts your brain, your central nervous system and your whole being into a state of free play. Max Eastman

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… although play can be said to be a serious business

• People tend to forget that play is serious. David Hockney
• Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play. Heraclitus
• Men should learn to live with the same seriousness with which children play. Friedrich Nietzsche
• It should be noted that children at play are not playing about; their games should be seen as their most serious-minded activity. Michel de Montaigne
• Man’s most serious activity is play. George Santayana

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Play makes us resilient to adversity…

• Those who play rarely become brittle in the face of stress or lose the healing capacity for humor. Stuart Brown
• Those who know how to play can easily leap over the adversities of life. And one who knows how to sing and laugh never brews mischief. Iglulik Proverb
• Play allows us to develop alternatives to violence and despair…. Stuart Brown
• Adversity

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…and brings many other great rewards

• Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play. Heraclitus
• To play is to yield oneself to a kind of magic. Hugo Rahner
• Deep meaning lies often in childish play. Johann Friedrich von Schiller
• Games lubricate the body and the mind. Benjamin Franklin
• Play has been the human’s most useful preoccupation. Frank Caplan
• When you play, you benefit from the physical movement, the intellectual stimulation and the creative expression. You’ll feel better about yourself, and many forms of active play will actually help you to get in better shape physically.  So while you may think you don’t have time to play, this is the best thing you could possible be doing. Jill Murphy Long
• Very often the effort men put into activities that seem completely useless turns out to be extremely important in ways no one could foresee. Play has always been the mainspring of culture. Italo Calvino
• A firm commitment to guilt-free play will recharge your batteries, creating renewed motivation, creativity, and energy for all the other areas of your life. Neil Fiore

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All work and no play comes at a cost

• As if a man’s soul were not too small to begin with, they have dwarfed an narrowed theirs by a life of all work and no play; until here they are at forty, with a listless attention, a mind vacant of all material of amusement, and not one thought to rub against another, while they wait for the train. Robert Louis Stevenson
• All work and no play is not good for the soul. Felix Sabates
• All work and no play doesn’t just make Jill and Jack dull, it kills the potential of discovery, mastery, and openness to change and flexibility and it hinders innovation and invention. Joline Godfrey
• The opposite of play is not work. It’s depression. Brian Sutton-Smith
• All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Stanley Kubrick

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Play is essential for children

• Children need the freedom and time to play. Play is not a luxury. Play is a necessity. Kay Renfield Jamiso
• Do not keep children to their studies by compulsion but by play. Plato
• Playing should be fun! In our great eagerness to teach our children we studiously look for “educational” toys, games with built-in lessons, books with a “message.” Often these “tools” are less interesting and stimulating than the child’s natural curiosity and playfulness.  Play is by its very nature educational.  And it should be pleasurable.  When the fun goes out of play, most often so does the learning.  Joanne E. Oppenheim
• Childhood

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Children can teach us much about the power of play

• Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play. Heraclitus
• 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
• Time is a game played beautifully by children. Heraclitus

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We must not lose our inner child’s love of play

• A child who does not play is not a child, but the man who doesn’t play has lost forever the child who lived in him and who he will miss terribly. Pablo Neruda
• In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play. Friedrich Nietzsche
• In the true man there is a child concealed – who wants to play. Friedrich Nietzsche
• My childhood may be over, but that doesn’t mean playtime is. Ron Olson
• If you aren’t playing well, the game isn’t as much fun. When that happens, I tell myself just to go out and play as I did when I was a kid. Thomas J. Watson, Sr.
• When I grow up I want to be a little boy. Joseph Heller

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Play is a human need

• Human beings need to have fun. We need to play, and most importantly, we need to laugh.  Norman Cousin
• It is essential to our well-being, and to our lives, that we play and enjoy life. Every single day do something that makes your heart sing. Wieder Marcia
• Work, love and play are the great balance wheels of man’s being. Orison Swett Marden
• Human needs

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Therefore, make time for play

• Live and work but do not forget to play, to have fun in life and really enjoy it. Eileen Caddy
• It is a happy talent to know how to play. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• 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
• You will always be your child’s favorite toy. Vicki Lansky
• God is happiest when his children are at play. Bagger Vance
• To the art of working well a civilized race would add the art of playing well. George Santayana
• People tend to forget that play is serious. David Hockney
• This is the real secret of life; to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realise it is play. Alan Watts
• 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
• The true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground. G. K. Chesterton
• Be aware of wonder. Live a balanced life – learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some. Robert Fulghum
• 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 Lockwood Huie

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After all, the true object of human life is play

• The true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground. Gilbert K. Chesterton
• Life, like all other games, becomes fun when one realizes that it’s just a game. Nerijus Stasiulis
• Everything we do in life… Is it not just a game? Gururaj Ananda Yogi
• Just play. Have fun. Enjoy the game. Michael Jordan
• Life must be lived as play. Plato
• Life is playfulness… We need to play so that we can rediscover the magic all around us. Flora Colao
• The world is your playground. Why aren’t you playing? Ellie Katz
• Be glad of life because it gives you the chance to love, to work, to play, and to look up at the stars. Henry Van Dyke
• In our play we reveal what kind of people we are. Ovid
• Life is a challenge, meet it! Life is a dream,
• Life is like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you represents determinism; the way you play it is free will. Jawaharlal Nehru
• Life is a game, play it! Life is Love, enjoy it Sri Sathya Sai Baba
• Life is playing a violin in public and learning the instrument as you go along. Lord Bulwer- Lytton
• Life is the game that must be played. Edwin Arlington Robinson
• Life’s a game. You have to options. Either you play along or you sit in the bench, watching others play it.

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• Why is play so elusive for some grown-ups? Because we are so strongly attracted and attached to a profoundly goal-oriented, work-ethic-driven society.  Like other forms of non-work, play connotes wastefulness, a stoppage in the way of what needs to get done.  Yet often what really needs to get done has more to do with our hearts and spirits and less to do with a deadline or longstanding project.  Play beckons to us, urging us to live in the present moment, a moment that becomes more luminous when we disallow interruptions like work and worry.  Leslie Levine
• You were intended not only to work, but to rest, laugh, play, and have proper leisure and enjoyment. To develop an all-around personality you must have interest outside of your regular vocation that will serve to balance your business responsibilities. Grenville Kleiser

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• All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy – and Jill a wealthy widow. Evan Esar
• I was such an ugly kid. When I played in the sandbox the cat kept covering me up.

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