31 Quotes by Brian Sutton-Smith

What many teachers observe as violent behavior is often really just playful aggression.

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.

People who play are happier people. And people who don't have access to play tend to be depressed.

One thinks of toys and play as an area of great novelty and potentiality where all sorts of responses can be developed. The fact that adults are allowing their imaginations to have activity through toy kinds of objects is a further reflection of the belief in the imagination of the adult mind.

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.

Play begins as a major feature of mammalian evolution and remains as a major method of becoming reconciled with our present universe.

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.

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.

For decades, there has been this assumption that children played and adults didn't. That's rubbish.