Top 500 Play Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “The prince must be a lion, but he must also know how to play the fox.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

202. “I’m always happy to play the bad girl. I just get to have fun, and it’s obviously all done with a smile.”

— Nicole Kidman

Also featured in: Fun Quotes

203. “I never think about the play or visualize anything. I do what comes to me at that moment. Instinct. It has always been that way.”

— Lionel Messi

204. “The scriptures offer us so many doctrinal diamonds. And when the light of the Spirit plays upon their several facets, they sparkle with celestial sense and illuminate the path we are to follow.”

— Neal A. Maxwell

205. “We are trapped by language to such a degree that every attempt to formulate insight is a play on words.”

— Niels Bohr

206. “I found solitary confinement the most forbidding aspect of prison life. There is no end and no beginning; there is only one’s mind, which can begin to play tricks. Was that a dream or did it really happen? One begins to question everything.”

— Nelson Mandela

207. “It took me twenty years study and practice to work up to what I wanted to play in this performance. How can she expect to listen five minutes and understand it?”

— Miles Davis

208. “You can sing only what you are. You can paint only what you are. You must be what your experiences, your environment, and your heredity have made you. For better or for worse, you must play your own little instrument in the orchestra of life.”

— Dale Carnegie

209. “I do not play games. There is not time for it. When I get through with work, I don’t want anything that requires the working of the mind.”

— Albert Einstein

210. “There are only two forces that unite men – fear and interest. All great revolutions originate in fear, for the play of interests does not lead to accomplishment.”

— Napoleon

211. “In the great orchestra we call life, you have an instrument and a song, and you owe it to God to play them both sublimely.”

— Max Lucado

212. “In the garden of your days cultivate festivity, play and celebrations.”

— Mary Anne Radmacher

213. “O gift of God! O perfect day: Whereon shall no man work, but play; Whereon it is enough for me, Not to be doing, but to be!”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

214. “A lot of people are afraid to tell the truth, to say no. That’s where toughness comes into play. Toughness is not being a bully. It’s having backbone.”

— Robert T. Kiyosaki

215. “To me, music shouldn’t be ego-driven. When you go out on stage and play songs, it is. But when you’re sitting in a room, writing songs, it’s a completely different process. It’s a completely different place. It’s a creative place, a musical place. It has nothing to do with who likes what.”

— Chris Cornell

216. “For better or worse, you must play your own little instrument in the orchestra of life.”

— Dale Carnegie

217. “I’m not a singer who plays a bit of drums. I’m a drummer that sings a bit.”

— Phil Collins

218. “What you have to do, you do with play. The universe is God’s play.”

— Joseph Campbell

219. “Don’t play the notes. Play the meaning of the notes.”

— Pablo Casals

220. “Give a man a soccer ball, he plays for a moment. Teach a man to play soccer, he plays for a life time.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

221. “Take care lest you play the hypocrite by spending all your time trying to get others right before you worship God yourself.”

— Oswald Chambers

222. “I know no other way to associate with great tasks than as play: as a sign of greatness, this is an essential presupposition.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

223. “You just have to press the right keys and the right pedals at the right time and the music plays itself.”

— Johann Sebastian Bach

224. “We cannot play at preaching. We preach for eternity.”

— Charles H. Spurgeon

225. “EXTINCTATHON, Monitored by MaddAddam. Adam named the living animals, MaddAddam names the dead ones. Do you want to play?”

— Margaret Atwood

226. “Shakespeare is a great psychologist, and whatever can be known of the heart of man may be found in his plays.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

227. “Those who play with the devil’s toys will be brought by degrees to wield his sword.”

— R. Buckminster Fuller

228. “Be it a weakness, it deserves some praise, We love the play-place of our early days; The scene is touching, and the heart is stone, That feels not at that sight, and feels at none.”

— William Cowper

229. “I promise to play for the logo on the front, not the name on the back.”

— Sidney Crosby

230. “I know your mama she don’t like me, cause I play in a rock and roll band.”

— Bruce Springsteen

231. “One can be serious about the frivolous, frivolous about the serious.”

— Susan Sontag

232. “We know that violent measures against religion are nonsense; but this is an opinion: as socialism grows, religion will disappear. Its disappearance must be done by social development, in which education must play a part.”

— Karl Marx

233. “Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play.”

— Heraclitus

234. “If you don’t know what to play, play nothing.”

— Miles Davis

235. “Play not the Peacock, looking everywhere about you, to see if you be well deck’t.”

— George Washington

236. “Football is a game you play with your brain.”

— Johan Cruijff

237. “I can’t say enough, how important my faith is to how I play the game and who I am.”

— Stephen Curry

238. “I don’t play a character. It’s totally just an extension of myself.”

— John Cena

239. “I want to do my best to make the people happy. I play with my heart for the sport.”

— Pelé

240. “Leisure is a form of silence, not noiselessness. It is the silence of contemplation such as occurs when we let our minds rest on a rosebud, a child at play, a Divine mystery, or a waterfall.”

— Fulton J. Sheen

241. “The fun is in always building something. After it’s built, you play with it awhile and then you’re through. You see, we never do the same thing twice around here. We’re always opening up new doors.”

— Walt Disney

Also featured in: Fun Quotes

242. “The preservation of biodiversity is not just a job for governments. International and non-governmental organisations, the private sector and each and every individual have a role to play in changing entrenched outlooks and ending destructive patterns of behaviour.”

— Kofi Annan

243. “I’m always drawing, so Draw Something is a cool game to play against your friends when you’re bored and sat chilling out and relaxing.”

— Zayn Malik

244. “Wherever you are, whatever your circumstances may be, whatever misfortune you may have suffered, the music of your life has not gone. It’s inside you – if you listen to it, you can play it.”

— Nido R. Qubein

245. “I’m a firm believer in that you play the way you practice.”

— Larry Bird

246. “Without this playing with fantasy no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of the imagination is incalculable.”

— C.G. Jung

247. “The roles we play in each other’s lives are only as powerful as the trust and connection between us – the protection, safety, and caring we are willing to share.”

— Oprah Winfrey

248. “I played my best everyday. You never know when someone may be seeing you play for the first time.”

— Joe DiMaggio

249. “I was playing when I invented the aqualung. I think play is the most serious thing in the world.”

— Jacques-Yves Cousteau

250. “Remember you are just an extra in everyone else’s play.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt