Brian Sutton-Smith

To play is to act out and be willful, exultant and committed, as if one is assured of one's prospects.

The kid who can play imaginatively doesn't tend to be violent. It's the same with adults.

The thing about a violent kid is that he can't play imaginatively.

Adults spend $500 billion on games and leisure activity each year, and some adults lament that kids get $15 billion for toys.

Playful stimulation probably hits all kinds of synaptic possibilities. It is all make-believe and all over the map. The potentiality of the synapses and the potentiality of playfulness are a beautiful marriage.

If you are going to take away war toys, then what are you to replace them with? Children need to feel courageous, brave, and assertive. They need to feel strong; that is the purpose of their play.

Once upon a time, soft toys were for babies. Now they're taken for granted as a feature of adult life.

Research has shown that children who play often both solitarily and socially become more creative and imaginative than those whose exposure to play and toys is limited.

We study play because life is crap. Life is crap, and it's full of pain and suffering, and the only thing that makes it worth living - the only thing that makes it possible to get up in the morning and go on living - is play.

Despite the efforts of some parents, children still tend to act out the traditional sex roles of our culture. The child's peer group may have more of an influence over this than the parents.

Puritanical attempts to cure society by taking toys away from children are hypocritical and futile.

Play is always a fantasy, but once you get into the frame, it is quite real, and everything you do is real. You put acres and acres of real movement and real action and real belief in it.