Brian Sutton-Smith

“The connections in the brain fade away unless used. We know that early stimulation of children leads to higher cognitive scores.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Children who play regularly with their peers are most likely to achieve the highest levels of adjustment as adults.”

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

“It's a mistake to try to use play to deliberately foster developmental progress.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“Forget about teaching the children about numbers and colors and the like, and just play with them.”

“A toy is seen both as a bauble and as an intellectual machine.”

“The opposite of play is not work—the opposite of play is depression.”

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

“I feel playful aggression is important for children because they have to deal with all kinds of anger and aggression in their lives.”

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

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

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

“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.”