"The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up. And one of the games to which it is most attached is called "Keep to-morrow dark," and which is also named (by the rustics in Shropshire, I have no doubt) "Cheat the Prophet." The players listen very carefully and respectfully to all that the clever men have to say about what is to happen in the next generation. The players then wait until all the clever men are dead, and bury them nicely. They then go and do something else. That is all. For a race of simple tastes, however, it is great fun."

Anthropologists say that in every culture in history, children have played the game hide and seek.

A great many people think of religion as if it was a game that they had to play with an August Opponent—a game at which both could not win, and yet they actually think they can play it unfairly. They want to cheat. But in that grand and awful game, it cannot be said that either wins unless both do.

Games are a trigger for adults to again become primitive, primal, as a way of thinking and remembering. An adult is a child who has more ethics and morals, that's all. When I am a child, creating, I am not creating a game. I am in the game. The game is not for children, it is for me. It is for an adult who still has a character of a child.

Game-free intimacy is or should be the most perfect form of human living.

Because there is so little opportunity for intimacy in daily life, and because some forms of intimacy (especially if intense) are psychologically impossible for most people, the bulk of time in serious social life is taken up with playing games. Hence games are both necessary and desirable, and the only problem at issue is whether the games played by an individual offer the best yield for him. In this connexion it should be remembered that the essential feature of a game is its culmination, or payoff. The principal function of the preliminary moves is to set up the situation for this payoff, but they are always designed to harvest the maximum permissible satisfaction at each step as a secondary product.

Games are passed on from generation to generation. The favoured game of any individual can be traced back to his parents and grandparents, and forward to his children.

Raising children is primarily a matter of teaching them what games to play. Different cultures and different social classes favour different types of games.

Many games are played most intensely by disturbed people, generally speaking, the more disturbed they are, the harder they play.

The attainment of autonomy is manifested by the release or recovery of three capacities: awareness, spontaneity and intimacy.

Parents, deliberately or unaware, teach their children from birth how to behave, think and perceive. Liberation from these influences is no easy matter, since they are deeply ingrained.

First, the weight of a whole tribal or family historical tradition has to be lifted. The same must be done with the demands of contemporary society at large, and finally advantages derived from one's immediate social circle have to be partly or wholly sacrificed. Following this, the individual must attain personal and social control, so that all the classes of behaviour become free choices subject only to his will. He is then ready for

Surely all God's people, however serious and savage, great or small, like to play. Whales and elephants, dancing, humming gnats, and invisibly small mischievous microbes, — all are warm with divine radium and must have lots of fun in them.

We long for a technological world, while keeping the natural aspect of our environment; we want the progress, while maintaining the traditions; we want organization while preserving individual freedom; we produce at a large scale while looking for unique products; we want clearness in our relationships, while we like to play with the ambiguity; we wish everlasting happiness while seeking incomparable magic moments… In reality, from all these contradictions, we are looking for only one thing: ASTONISHMENT. We would life to astonish us every day! That’s why we all, human beings, love playing, because games are synonymous of risk and astonishment. Games are enactments, and the act of playing is an illusion of the illusion of the reality.

Play is not for every hour of the day, or for any hour taken at random. There is a tide in the affairs of children. Civilization is cruel in sending them to bed at the most stimulating time of dusk.