Dare to err and dream;
A higher meaning often lies in childish play.
                            -Friedrich Schiller, 1802

The space of play and the space of thought are the two theaters of freedom.
                            -Eugene Rosenstock-Huessy

It has been my good luck to kill every kind of game properly belonging to the United States.
                            -Teddy Roosevelt

Roger Federer is a wonder to behold no matter how often the game is interrupted with a word from the sponsor. The same can be said of every other sport in which a brilliant performance brings joy to Mudville - the dancing on ice at last winter’s Olympics, the fooling around with a soccer ball at this summer’s World Cup - but the glory of it isn’t the winning or losing, the bombastic Rooseveltian beating of the others; it is Einstein’s equation made flesh, the unity of energy and the mass seen in a movement of light.

Michelson acknowledged the beauty of the game to which Mozart was addicted, but then, rolling down his sleeves, putting on his coat, and walking toward the door, he proposed amendments, each of them after a moment of further reflection. Yes, billiards was a good game, but not as good a game as painting, which in turn was not as good a game as music which, when one had a chance to think about it, was not as good a game as physics.

Wild animals never kill for sport. Man is the only one to whom the torture and death of his fellow creatures is amusing in itself.
                             -James A. Froude, 1886

These useless men ought to be cut up and served at a banquet. I really believe that athletes have less intelligence than swine.
                             -Dion Chrysostom, c. 95