Arthur C. Clarke Quotes

Why we play as children is not because it is our work or because it is how we learn, though both statements are true; we play because we are wired for joy, it is imperative as human beings.

Look at kids playing with blocks. I think it's in everyone's DNA to want to be a builder.

Play is the only way the highest intelligence of humankind can unfold.

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

You can't learn to play the piano without playing the piano, you can't learn to write without writing, and, in many ways, you can't learn to think without thinking. Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's so hard.

I had always been scrupulously careful to avoid the smallest suggestion of infant indoctrination, which I think is ultimately responsible for much of the evil in the world. Others, less close to her, showed no such scruples, which upset me, as I very much wanted her, as I want all children, to make up her own mind freely when she became old enough to do so. I would encourage her to think, without telling her what to think.

Over time, the games we play can change how we think and what we're capable of. And it's easy to maximize the benefits so the changes are positive.

They’d say, ‘If you play the record backwards, you can hear evil things like 'grrrr!'’ and I would think, ‘Geez, I didn’t know the devil sounded like that. I thought he was coherent like the rest of us.’

Play is as necessary to the perfect development of a child as sunshine is to the perfect development of a plant.

I think that you only occasionally have to play evil because everything you're doing is.

The soul begins to travel when the child begins to think.

Children that play outside develop better problem solving skills and have a stronger ability to work within a group.

Now that I was compelled to think about it, reading was something that just came to me, as learning to fasten the seat of my union suit without looking around, or achieving two bows from a snarl of shoelaces.

With life and all I've been through, I do have a belief in goodness, a good spirit. I think what people have done with religion is personified good and evil, so good's become God with 'o' out, and evil's become Devil with a 'd' added. That's my theory of religion.

Play is the royal road to childhood happiness and adult brilliance.

You can keep your mind open and use your imagination and be creative even when you're older. For kids, I definitely think keeping your mind open and using your imagination and being able to play pretend and that it's okay.

I fancy that most people who think at all have done a great deal of their thinking in the first fourteen years.

One way to think about play, is as the process of finding new combinations for known things--combinations that may yield new formsof expression, new inventions, new discoveries, and new solutions....It's exactly what children's play seems to be about and explains why so many people have come to think that children's play is so important a part of childhood--and beyond.

His legs remembered the correct position for squatting down with toys. He played. He fit the round male studs into the round female grooves. He got some thinking done as he hunkered down on his fallen-sleep legs.

I like ambiguity. I think it's so much more interesting to play than an overtly good or an overtly evil person.

I think the most inspiring thing that Americans can do for the rest of the world is struggle against the evils in our own society.

The Devil would be the best way out as an excuse for God; in that way he would be playing the same part as an agent of economic discharge as the Jew does in the world of the Aryan ideal. But even so, one can hold God responsible for the existence of the Devil just as well as for the existence of the wickedness which the Devil embodies.

I think it's retarded. I probably shouldn't say that. I think it's stupid. If you want a Super Bowl, put a retractable dome on your stadium. Then you can get one. Other than that, I don't really like the idea. I don't think people would react very well to it, or be glad to play anybody in that kind of weather.

I don't feel any part of religion. I think the Bible is God's gift of salvation that He gave me because I trusted in Him when I was six year-old. It was a gift and I didn't earn it.

It is rather more noble to help people purely out of concern for their suffering than it is to help them because you think the Creator of the Universe wants you to do it, or will reward you for doing it, or will punish you for not doing it. The problem with this linkage between religion and morality is that it gives people bad reasons to help other human beings when good reasons are available.