"There are branches of learning and education which we must study merely with a view to leisure spent in intellectual activity, and these are to be valued for their own sake; whereas these kinds of knowledge which are useful in business are to be deemed necessary and exist for the sake of other things."
- Aristotle, Politics
"Play, by demanding all of our energies and skill to perform either badly or well, takes us out of ourselves. We are at our best when we are looking at something besides ourselves.
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Aristotle...meant that play was something for its own sake, something that need not exist, something that was free.
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The closest most people come to pure contemplation is in the beholding of a good game, in being fascinated with the play, the strategy, the uncertainty of its results."
- James V. Schall, On the Meaning of Sport
"What is the very best thing, I ask in conclusion, that can happen to a young man or woman during his years in college? Earning a degree? I doubt it. The very best thing that can happen to us is, as Socrates put it in The Apology, “to know that we do not know.” And this knowing that we do not know is a very active kind of a thing, it is something that wakes us up, gives us a thirst, as it were, for being, for what is."
- James V. Schall, What Think You of the Peacock's Tail?
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