Games quotes and playful sayings

On this page, we present game quotes, game sayings, game aphorisms and game poems. We have not verified the sources. If we have time and feel like it, we will research, add and link them. You know sources or other playful quotes, words of wisdom or sayings that are missing from this collection. Then post a comment and we’ll add them to the list.

Quotes/sayings about games and people

For, to finally say it all at once, man only plays when he is in the full meaning of the word a man, and he is only fully a man when he plays. / Friedrich Schiller, 1759 – 1805, German poet and philosopher, Source
Play is as necessary for human life as rest. / Thomas Aquinas, philosopher and theologian, 1225 – 1274
Play is man’s first poetry. Eating and drinking are his prose. / Jean Paul, 1763 – 1825, German writer
Playing is a human right / Walter “Kosilo” Kosar

Quotes/sayings about games and religion

God created man so that he might enjoy games, for playing uplifts and dispels gloom. / Alfonso the Wise, King of Castile and León, 1221 – 1284
God does not play dice. Originally: I cannot believe that God plays dice with the cosmos. / Albert Einstein, physicist, 1879 – 1955
Einstein, stop telling God what to do with His dice! / Niels Bohr, physicist, 1885 – 1962
… not only does God play dice, He sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen. Cited as: God not only plays dice, He also cheats. / Stephen Hawking, physicist, 1942

Quotes/sayings about games and children

Splitting atoms is child’s play compared to a children’s game. / Albert Einstein, physicist, 1879 – 1955
Play is the way children come to understand the world in which they live. / Maxim Gorky, writer, 1868 – 1936
To truly play, a person must, for as long as they play, be a child again. / Johan Huizinga, cultural historian, 1872 – 1945
The contrast between play and the seriousness of life can only occur to adults, for children are essentially always playing; for them, play and life are one. / Ricarda Huch, writer and philosopher, 1864 – 1947
From the way a child plays, you can guess how they will take on their life’s task as an adult. / Rudolf Steiner, publicist and esotericist, 1861 – 1925
In every true man, a child is hidden: it wants to play. / Friedrich Nietzsche, writer and philosopher, 1844 – 1900

Quotes/sayings about games, adults and old age

I am too old to only play, and too young to be without desire. / Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749 – 1832, German poet
People do not stop playing because they grow old, they grow old because they stop playing! / Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1809-1894, American writer
Play looks different at every age. For the child, it consists of depicting life; for the adolescent, of dreaming about life; for the young man, of activating life; for the mature person, of distracting themselves from life. / Sully Prudhomme, 1839 – 1907, French writer
Status symbols are adults’ toys. / Lothar Schmidt

Quotes and sayings about games and learning

The profound dialectic of play is that, despite its seemingly purpose-free nature, it serves the development of life functions – and all the more sustainably the less it is goal-oriented or development-focused. / Hermann Röhrs, educator, 1915 – 2012
Through play, you can get to know a person in an hour better than through conversation in a year. / Plato, philosopher, 428/27 – 348/47 BC
The truly wise must occasionally relax the tense sharpness of their mind – and this is achieved through playful action and thought. / Thomas Aquinas, philosopher and theologian, 1225 – 1274
The development of intelligence needs play because of the infinite variety of options. / Max Jürgen Kobbert, game designer and professor of perception psychology, 1944
Playing is the only way to truly learn to understand. / Frederic Vester, biochemist and systems researcher, 1925 – 2003
Whoever does not learn to play at school does not learn to learn. / Wolfgang Menzel, Germanist and educator, 1935
Man needs bread and play. Bread to grow and exist, play to experience that existence. / Frederik Jacobus Johannes Buytendijk, biologist and anthropologist, 1887 – 1974
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. / Felice Leonardo Buscaglia, writer, 1924 – 1998
Who plays, thinks, and whoever thinks gets through life more successfully. / Manfred
Who plays, learns! Who learns, lives! Who lives, plays! / Jörg Roggensack

Quotes and sayings about games and work

All work and no play makes you dull. / Karl Marx, philosopher and economist, 1818 – 1883
Although work was considered a curse, it was sanctified and play was outright defamed. / Ruth Dirx, writer, 1913 – 1944
If people were always serious and industrious and did not also give play its due, they would, without realising it, either go out of their minds or become completely listless and tired! / Aramis, king, 570 – 526 BC
If you want creative employees, give them enough time to play. / John Cleese, British comedian and actor
Play so that you can be serious. For play is a form of rest, and people need rest since they cannot always be active. / Aristotle, philosopher, 384 – 322 BC
Play is the spice of all work. / Plutarch, writer, 45 – 125
Work as little as possible, play as much as possible. / Alex Randolph, game designer, 1922 – 2004
In order to do valuable work, you must play – that is, tinker, try, experiment. / Emanuel Lasker, chess player and philosopher, 1868 – 1941

Quotes and sayings about games, love and friendship

No more lasting than snow in fire’s glow is a lover’s vow and the player’s too. / Lope de Vega, poet, 1562 – 1635
Through play, our hearts lie open. (Nuda per lusus pectora nostra patent.) / Publius Ovidius Naso, poet, 43 BC – 17
Playing is sharing a piece of joy with someone else. / Manfred Reindl, game designer, 1965
The most beautiful prize in play is the winning of a friendship. / Folk wisdom

Quotes and sayings about games and politics

Play is the only thing men truly take seriously. That is why the rules of play are older than all the laws of the world. / Peter Bamm, journalist, 1897 – 1975
Playing is a principle inherent in human beings. / Edmund Burke 1729-1797, Irish-English statesman

Quotes and sayings about games, luck and chance

Playing means experimenting with chance. / Novalis, 1772-1801, real name Friedrich von Hardenberg
Players are people who give luck a chance. / Werner Mitsch, 1936-2009, German aphorist
He calls card games games of chance. Can’t he shuffle properly? / Werner Mitsch, 1936-2009, German aphorist
Fate shuffles the cards, we play. / Arthur Schopenhauer, 1788 – 1860, German philosopher
The only real charm of life is play. But what if you are indifferent to winning or losing? / Charles Baudelaire, 1821 – 1867, French writer

Quotes and sayings about games and defeats

If you lose, don’t lose the lesson. / Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso, 2nd Commandment
Learn the rules, then you’ll know how to break them. / Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso, 5th Commandment
Whoever gets angry while playing should not take part. / Finnish proverb
It’s not about winning or losing – it’s about humiliating your opponent! / Hägar the Horrible
Whoever fights may lose, whoever doesn’t fight has already lost. / German proverb
Whoever doesn’t want to lose shouldn’t play. / German proverb

Quotes and sayings about games and culture

For a long time, I have increasingly come to believe that human culture arises and unfolds in play – as play. For me, the question is not what place play occupies among other cultural phenomena, but to what extent culture itself has the character of play. / Johan Huizinga, 1872 – 1945, Dutch cultural historian
Playing is a matter of culture. / Reinhold Wittig, German game designer, source: Spieleautoren-Treff 1983 catalogue

Poems about games

Life is a game of Goose…

Life is a game of Goose:
The further forward you go,
The sooner you reach the goal,
Where nobody wants to stand.

They say geese are stupid,
Oh, don’t believe the people:
For one once looks around,
To motion me backwards.

It’s quite different in this world.
Where everything pushes forward,
If someone stumbles or falls,
No soul looks back.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, writer and poet, 1749 – 1832, Source

Other playful quotes and sayings

All isolated distinctions, all apparent oppositions to play only ever form isolated partial views and at best provide ‘examples’. / Gerhard von Xujawa
Thus, the purely serious person is without virtue in the sense that they despise play, which is just as necessary for human life as rest. / Thomas Aquinas, 1225 – 1274, Italian philosopher
Poetic illusion is play of ideas, and play is the illusion of actions. / Friedrich von Schlegel, 1772 – 1829, cultural philosopher and writer,
Play is the highest form of research. / Albert Einstein, physicist, 1879 – 1955
Play reveals character. / Proverbial saying
The player is a person who needs hope most of all, because they suffer most from fear. They are always a desperado. / Otto Weininger, 1880 – 1903, Austrian philosopher
Good thoughts about play are rare, which is connected to the fact that the theoretical person is not inclined to take play seriously. They tend to take themselves seriously, and in doing so, they deny play any seriousness. / F. G. Jünger
The source of all good lies in play. / Friedrich Wilhelm August Fröbel, 1782-1852, German educator
A toy first gives pleasure through its appearance, and then joy through its use. / Jean Paul Levana
It is play, and only play, that makes a person complete. / Friedrich Schiller, 1759 – 1805, German poet and philosopher
It is as if our civilisation can no longer bear the sight of someone playing, because in their purpose-free actions it senses a form of freedom that disrupts its concept. / Friedrich Sieburg, 1893 – 1964, German writer
Surely there is nothing more sensible one can do in this beautiful world than to play. To me, the whole of life seems like a game. / Henrik Ibsen, 1828-1906, Norwegian dramatist
In life, games are never won as undisputedly as in play; play gives us satisfactions that life denies. / Emanuel Lasker, 1868 – 1941, former world chess champion
In play, we reveal whose child we are in spirit. / Publius Ovidius Naso, poet, 43 BC – 17 AD
The better you know the rules of the game, the more fun it is to bend them. / Werner Mitsch, 1936 – 2009, German aphorist
People who burn their fingers understand nothing about playing with fire. / Oscar Wilde, 1854 – 1900, Irish lyricist, dramatist and playwright
Life does not consist in having good cards, but in playing the ones you have well. / Josh Billings, 1818-1885, American writer
One should always play honestly when one holds the trumps. / Oscar Wilde, 1854 – 1900, Irish lyricist, dramatist and playwright
People play with everything that surrounds them: with words, with power, with love, with music. / Bernward Thole, German games critic and former director of the German Games Archive Marburg
You cannot play cards with someone who only has trumps. / Friedrich Hebbel, 1813 – 1863, German dramatist and lyricist
Nowhere has humanity shown more ingenuity than in its games. / Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, 1646 – 1716, German philosopher, mathematician, jurist, historian
As long as a person plays, they are free. / Friedrich Sieburg, 1893 – 1964, German writer
Play is a voluntary act or occupation, performed within certain fixed limits of time and space, according to freely accepted but absolutely binding rules, having its aim in itself and accompanied by a feeling of tension, joy and the consciousness that it is different from ordinary life. / Johan Huizinga, 1872 – 1945, Dutch cultural historian
Play: an occupation that is pleasant in itself. / Immanuel Kant, 1724 – 1804, German philosopher
Designing games is the most beautiful game. / Reinhold Wittig, German game designer, source: Spieleautoren-Treff 1983 catalogue
Games are books that you play / Hubertus Porada, Edition Perlhuhn 1976
Games are questions to answers. / Reinhold Wittig, German game designer
Playing is an activity that you cannot take seriously enough. / Jacques-Yves Cousteau, 1910 – 1997, French marine researcher
Playing is juggling with reality. / Bernward Thole, German games critic and former director of the German Games Archive Marburg
If you measure everything by the yardstick of reality, there is no play left. If there is no play left, what remains? / Leo Tolstoy, 1828 – 1910, Russian writer
Whoever does not see through play may be too deeply involved in it. / Manfred Hinrich, 1926 – 2015, German philosopher, teacher and writer
As in a play, in life it is not about how long it lasts, but how well it is played. / Lucius Annaeus Seneca, 1 – 65, Roman philosopher and natural scientist
We all play; whoever knows this is wise. / Arthur Schnitzler, 1862-1931, Austrian dramatist and storyteller
Go and play! / Latin proverb
Play teaches composure by putting on a cheerful face even in a bad game. /
Arthur Schopenhauer, 1788 – 1860, German philosopher

Reading tip - Playful Word Treasures: From an Ace up Your Sleeve to a Tight Spot
In sport, politics and business, people compete, go all in and in the end the dice are cast. Jürgen Ehrenmüller knows where such metaphors come from. In his diploma thesis “Spielerische WortSchätze” he examined how people’s passion for games is reflected in everyday language.