Idolatry is the mother of all games.
—Novatian, c. 255Quotes
Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules, and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence; in other words it is war minus the shooting.
—George Orwell, 1945The true mission of American sports is to prepare young men for war.
—Dwight D. Eisenhower, c. 1952A brilliant boxing match, quicksilver in its motions, transpiring far more rapidly than the mind can absorb, can have the power that Emily Dickinson attributed to great poetry: you know it’s great when it takes the top of your head off.
—Joyce Carol Oates, 1987The whole secret of fencing consists but in two things, to give and not to receive.
—Molière, 1670Sport is the bloom and glow of a perfect health.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1838A passion for horses, players, and gladiators seems to be the epidemic folly of the times. The child receives it in his mother’s womb; he brings it with him into the world, and in a mind so possessed, what room for science, or any generous purpose?
—Tacitus, c. 100Play, wherein persons of condition, especially ladies, waste so much of their time, is a plain instance to me that men cannot be perfectly idle; they must be doing something, for how else could they sit so many hours toiling at that which generally gives more vexation than delight to people whilst they are actually engaged in it?
—John Locke, 1693Courage and grace is a formidable mixture. The only place to see it is in the bullring.
—Marlene Dietrich, 1962I do love cricket—it’s so very English.
—Sarah Bernhardt, c. 1908Two things only the people anxiously desire, bread and the circus games.
—Juvenal, c. 121The gods play games with men as balls.
—Plautus, c. 200 BCFootball causeth fighting, brawling, contention, quarrel picking, murder, homicide and great effusion of bloode, as daily experience teacheth.
—Philip Stubbes, 1583