John Dewey Quotes

I cannot face with comfort the idea of life without work; work and the free play of the imagination are for me the same thing, I take no pleasure in anything else.

If you watch young children play, you will notice that they create games, characters, situations, whole worlds in which they immerse themselves with intense concentration.

When we go out there, we have fun, but we get to work, and I think we're at our best when we're having fun. Having fun is key.

My body works best when I'm playing all the time, so when I work more and I play more, I feel better.

My parents would tell us to go outside and play or to do creative stuff, but television was very limited. So we used our own creativity to entertain ourselves. We were out in the woods a lot making huts and playing horses.

Play is really the work of childhood.

The ability to play pretend is something that everyone has access to; you see little kids doing it.

Man works when he is partially involved. When he is totally involved he is at play or leisure.

Art originates in play - in improvisation, experiment, and fantasy; it remains forever, in its deepest instincts, playful and spontaneous, an exercise of the imagination analogous to the exercising of the physical body to no purpose other than ecstatic release.

There was a big age difference between me and my brothers - about 10 years - so I was an only child for a long time. I used to hang out a lot on my own. I played a lot of weird games with a lot of imaginary people. I guess it's kind of roleplaying.

I used to go outside every day and invent these elaborate worlds and scenarios in my head, and when I grew too old for playing pretend, I started to write everything down instead.

It [love about acting] is all about role playing - the same thing you do when you're a kid, when you play with dolls or toys and make up stories. I never grew out of it.

Play needs direction as well as work.

We owe most of our great inventions and most of the achievements of genius to idleness either enforced or voluntary.

While the work or play is on, it is a lot of fun if while you are doing one you don't constantly feel that you ought to be doing the other.

Many people know how to work hard; many others know how to play well; but the rarest talent in the world is the ability to introduce elements of playfulness into work, and to put some constructive labor into our leisure.

Creativity and the world of the imagination - the beauty of what we see as a child and the kind of play that we experience as a child - can be a way for us to survive tough times.

The happy people are those who are producing something; the bored people are those who are consuming much and producing nothing.

Certainly I've lived my whole life through my imagination. But the world of imagination is there for all of us--a sense of play, of pretending, of wonder. It's there with us as we live.

I'm a lucky guy. I get to sit around every day and indulge in make believe and get paid for it.

The opposite of play is not work. It's depression.

I think directing is part play, part work, not just all work, because I think you always have to play. I think that's ultimately why I got into making movies, is because I love to play.

Art is the imagination at play in the field of time. Let yourself play.

We have come to think that duty should come first. I disagree. Duty should be a by-product. Writing, the creative effort, the use of the imagination, should come first – at least, for some part of every day of your life. It is a wonderful blessing if you use it. You will become happier, more enlightened, alive, impassioned, light-hearted and generous to everybody else. Even your health will improve. Colds will disappear and all the other ailments of discouragement and boredom.

Everyone wants a definition of creativity that makes what they do into something special and what everyone else does into nothing special. But the fact is, we're all creative. We come up with weird and interesting ideas all the time. The biggest difference between 'creators' isn't their imagination - it's how hard they work. Ideas are easy. Doing stuff is hard.