50 Inspirational Quotes Celebrating the Joy and Power of Outdoor Play

"Children need the freedom and time to play. Play is not a luxury. Play is a necessity."

- Kay Redfield Jamison

"Risky play is really important for kids—all kids—because it teaches hazard assessment, it teaches delayed gratification, it teaches resilience, it teaches confidence. When kids get outside and practice bravery, they learn valuable life lessons."

- Caroline Paul

"We can never have enough of nature"

- Henry David Thoreau

"In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks"

- John Muir

"The drive to play freely is a basic, biological drive. Lack of free play may not kill the physical body, as would lack of air, food, or water, but it kills the spirit and stunts mental growth."

- Peter Gray

"All good things are wild and free"

- Henry David Thoreau

"Encouraging a child to go outside in all weather builds resilience, but more importantly it saves them from spending their life merely tolerating the ‘bad’ days in favour of a handful of ‘good’ ones – a life of endless expectations and conditions where happiness hinges on sunshine."

- Nicolette Sowder

"To raise a nature-bonded child is to raise a rebel, a dreamer, an innovator… someone who will walk their own verdant, winding path."

- Nicolette Sowder

"All children need nature. Not just the ones whose parents appreciate nature. Not only those children of a certain economic class or culture or set of abilities. Every child."

- Richard Louv

"Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt."

- John Muir

"Encourage your child to have muddy, grassy or sandy feet by the end of each day, that’s the childhood they deserve."

- Penny Whitehouse

"Children cannot bounce off the walls if we take away the walls"

- Erin Kenny

"In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt."

- Margaret Atwood

"Nature is a tool to get children to experience not just the wider world, but themselves."

- Stephen Moss

"If we want our children to move mountains, we first have to let them get out of their chairs."

- Nicolette Sowder

"Keep your children wild- don’t make them grow up too fast. Let them spend their days in the sunshine using their imagination. They are the change! Those wild children daydreaming in the sunshine will grow into grounded adults with minds and spirits capable of creating a better future."

- Brooke Hampton

"Children still need a childhood with dirt, mud, puddles, trees, sticks and tadpoles"

- Brooke Hampton

"Teaching children about the natural world should be seen as one of the most important events in their lives."

- Thomas Berry

"Before we ever put a pencil in a child’s hands, those hands should dig, climb, press, pull, squish, twist, and pinch in a wide array of environments and with a variety of materials."

- Amanda Morgan

"Nature play is not another thing to shove into the crevices of an already overloaded schedule. A childhood built upon nature play is a different way to do childhood altogether."

- Ginny Yurich

"Young people, I want to beg of you always keep your eyes open to what Mother Nature has to teach you. By so doing you will learn many valuable things every day of your life."

- George Washington Carver

"Their minds were not built to sit and be taught. They were built to explore, play, and learn."

- Layla Gordon Lu

"Children deserve to grow and learn in a place and alongside a force that is as wild and alive as they are."

- Nicolette Sowder

"Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything."

- Albert Einstein

"Kids are born scientists. They’re born probing the natural world that surrounds them. They’ll lift up a rock. They’ll pick up a bug. They’ll pull petals off of a flower. They’ll ask you why the grass is green and the sky is blue, and they’ll experiment with breakable things indoor house. I think the best thing a parent can do, when raising a child, is simply get out of their way."

- Neil deGrasse Tyson

"Times have changed, but children haven’t. Young kids are on the same evolutionary path they’ve always been on. It’s our expectations that are off. We’re trying to make children ready for the next stage of life before natural development allows them to be ready."

- Heather Shumaker

"Our challenge isn’t so much to teach children about the natural world, but to find ways to sustain instinctive connections they already carry."

- Terry Krautwurst

"Children more than ever need opportunities to be in their bodies in the world – jumping rope, bicycling, stream hopping, and fort building. It’s this engagement between limbs of the body and bones of the earth where true balance and centeredness emerge."

- David Sobel

"Time in nature is not a luxury. It is a necessity. And we must give our children time to explore, discover, and get to know the world, which brings endless delights and lessons that never cease."

- Ainsley Arment

"No, we don’t need more sleep. It’s our souls that are tired, not our bodies. We need nature. We need magic. We need adventure. We need freedom. We need truth. We need stillness. We don’t need more sleep, we need to wake up and live."

- Brooke Hampton

"The earth does not belong to us. We belong to the earth."

- Chief Seattle

"Now I see the secret of making the best person: it is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth."

- Walt Whitman

"You carry Mother Earth within you. She is not outside of you. Mother Earth is not just your environment."

- Thich Nhat Hanh

"I took a walk in the woods and came out taller than the trees."

- Henry David Thoreau

"What would our lives be like if our days and nights were as immersed in nature as they are in technology?"

- Richard Louv

"Let’s raise children who can name more stars in the sky than stars on the screen."

- Nicolette Sowder

"Let the children be free; encourage them; let them run outside when it is raining; let them remove their shoes when they find a puddle of water; and when the grass of the meadows is wet with dew, let them run on it and trample it with their bare feet; let them rest peacefully when a tree invites them to sleep beneath its shade; let them shout and laugh when the sun wakes them in the morning."

- Maria Montessori

"The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"All good things are wild and free."

- Henry David Thoreau

"We are all meant to be naturalists, each with his own degree, and it is inexcusable to live in a world so full of the marvels of plant and animal life and to care for none of these things."

- Charlotte Mason

"If we want children to flourish, to become truly empowered, let us allow them to love the earth before we ask them to save it."

- David Sobel

"We will conserve only what we love. We love only what we know. We know only what we are taught."

- Baba Dioum

"Children are born with a sense of wonder and an affinity for nature. Properly cultivated, these values can mature into ecological literacy. And eventually into sustainable patterns of living."

- Zenobia Barlow

"We cannot protect something we do not love, we cannot love what we do not know, and we cannot know what we do not see. Or hear. Or sense."

- Richard Louv

"Play is the highest form of research"

- Albert Einstein

"Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach of us more than we can ever learn from books."

- John Lubbock

"Restore balance. Most kids have technology, school and extracurricular activities covered. It’s time to add a pinch of  adventure, a sprinkle of  sunshine  and a big handful of outdoor play."

- Penny Whitehouse

"We must teach our children to smell the earth, to taste the rain, to touch the wind, to see things grow, to hear the sun rise and night fall –  to care."

- John Cleal

"When children play in natural spaces, they’re far more likely to invent their own games than in more structured settings – a key factor in becoming self-directed and inventive adults later in life"

- Richard Louv

"There is a garden in every childhood, an enchanted place where the colors are brighter, the air is softer and the morning more fragrant than ever."

- Elizabeth Lawrence

"If we provide enough space and possibilities for moving freely, then the children will move as well as animals: skillfully, simply, securely, naturally."

- Dr. Emmi Pikler

"Kids don’t need more toys – they need more adventures!"

- Sarah Mueller

"If you wish your children to think deep thoughts, to know the holiest emotions, take them to the woods and hills, and give them the freedom of the meadows; the hills purify those who walk upon them."

- Richard Jefferies

"Children come alive by being in nature, beckoning us back into its wild places. It awakens their minds, centers their hearts and gives depth of the soul. It’s not an abondment of academic work but rather a help to it."

- Ainsley Arment

"Every child needs nature. Not just the ones whose parents appreciate nature. Not only those of a certain economic class or culture or set of abilities. Every child."

- Richard Louv

"Children still need a childhood with dirt, mud, puddles, trees, sticks, and tadpoles."

- Brooke Hampton

"Show the children every winged thing. The bees, dragonflies, queen ants, bluebirds, luna moths & swallowtails. Creatures that inspire them to defy gravity."

- Nicolette Sowder

"Children deserve to grow and learn in a place & alongside a force that is as wild and alive as they are."

- Nicolette Sowder

"I am happy out here. Dirty feet, messy hair & wild water on my skin. Out here with the wild things; this is where I belong."

- Brooke Hampton

"Tell me and I’ll forget. Teach me and I’ll remember. Involve me and I’ll learn."

- Benjamin Franklin

"Don’t just tell children about the world. Show them."

- Penny Whitehouse

"Anything you teach in an indoor classroom can be taught outdoors, often in ways that are more enjoyable for children."

- Cathy James

"We could have never loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it."

- George Eliot

"It’s the things we play with and the people who help us play that make a great difference in our lives."

- Fred Rogers

"Play is the foundation of learning, creativity, self-expression, and constructive problem-solving. It’s how children wrestle with life to make it meaningful."

- Susan Linn

"Play is foundational for bonding relationships and fostering tolerance. It’s where we learn to trust and where we learn about the rules of the game. Play increases creativity and resilience, and it’s all about the generation of diversity—diversity of interactions, diversity of behaviors, diversity of connections."

- Isabel Behncke

"Play is the primary way children were designed to learn."

- Kathy Hersh-Pasek and Roberta Golinkoff

"It’s important that we don’t underestimate the play of children because it can produce a much more satisfyingly creative adult."

- Dorothy and Jerome Singer

"Playing a game together actually builds up bonds and trust and cooperation. We actually build stronger social relationships as a result."

- Jane McGonigal

"My childhood play took me to extremes, and all of them, I now understand, were a fun way to test the social realities into which one is born. Surely this is a most important evolutionary function of play—finding out what is fun and fair or not fair on the field of life."

- Jaak Panksepp

"Play is our brain’s favorite way of learning."

- Diane Ackerman

"The world of pretend play is one in which children can be free to express themselves, their ideas, their emotions, and their fantastic visions of themselves, of other people, and of the world."

- Sandra Russ

"The imagination is an essential tool of the mind, a fundamental way of thinking, an indispensable means of becoming and remaining human."

- Ursula K. Le Guin

"The true object of all human life is play."

- G. K. Chesterton

"Play gives children a chance to practice what they are learning."

- Fred Rogers

"Do not…keep children to their studies by compulsion but by play."

- Plato

"The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct."

- Carl Jung

"You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have."

- Maya Angelou

"Play matters because people matter. It reminds us of our interdependence and gives us a chance to really see other people. And in turn, to be really and truly seen."

- Jill Vialet

"In play a child always behaves beyond his average age, above his daily behavior. In play it is as though he were a head taller than himself."

- Lev Vygotsky

"Creative people are curious, flexible, persistent, and independent with a tremendous spirit of adventure and a love of play."

- Henri Matisse

"Children learn as they play. Most importantly, in play children learn how to learn."

- O. Fred Donaldson

"When children pretend, they’re using their imaginations to move beyond the bounds of reality. A stick can be a magic wand. A sock can be a puppet. A small child can be a superhero."

- Fred Rogers

"The debt we owe to the play of the imagination is incalculable."

- Carl Jung

"Children have always learned and created places for themselves through play."

- Donna R. Barnes

"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."

- Diane Paulus

"Play touches and stimulates vitality, awakening the whole person—mind and body, intelligence and creativity, spontaneity and intuition."

- Viola Spolin

"Through observing children at play, we recognize what their worries, concerns, and fantasies are. We learn about their basic needs, their feelings of love and anger, their rivalries and fears of failure, their secret wishes and desires."

- Dorothy and Jerome Singer

"If you want to be creative, stay in part a child, with the creativity and invention that characterizes children before they are deformed by adult society."

- Jean Piaget

"A child who does not play is not a child, but the man who does not play has lost forever the child who lived in him."

- Pablo Neruda

"It is in playing, and only in playing, that the individual child or adult is able to be creative and to use the whole personality, and it is only in being creative that the individual discovers the self."

- D.W. Winnicott

"Imagination is the only key to the future. Without it, none exists—with it all things are possible."

- Ida Tarbell

"Children who play creatively find multiple uses for objects. They can transform a blanket into a tent one day and a cave the next. A stick can be a magic wand, a sword, a lightsaber, or a mast for a schooner."

- Susan Linn

"Play, while it cannot change the external realities of children’s lives, can be a vehicle for children to explore and enjoy their differences and similarities and to create, even for a brief time, a more just world where everyone is an equal and valued participant."

- Patricia G. Ramsey

"As astronauts and space travelers children puzzle over the future; as dinosaurs and princesses they unearth the past. As weather reporters and restaurant workers they make sense of reality; as monsters and gremlins they make sense of the unreal."

- Gretchen Owocki

"Imagination is the thing that differentiates us from other sentient species on this planet. We have the ability to place our attention in a past, present, or future. That is a uniquely human superpower."

- Levar Burton

"We shouldn’t stick too close to everyday reality but give room to the reality of the heart, of the mind, and of the imagination. Those things can help us in life."

- Hayao Miyazaki

"Time outdoors in nature offers endless opportunities to learn and grow, and supports the development of the whole child – cognitive, physical, social, emotional and creative"

- Erin Saunders

"Play is hard to maintain as you get older. You get less playful. You shouldn’t, of course."

- Richard Feynman

"Necessity may be the mother of invention, but play is certainly the father."

- Roger von Oech

"Now in myth and ritual the great instinctive forces of civilized life have their origin: law and order, commerce and profit, craft and art, poetry, wisdom and science. All are rooted in the primeval soil of play."

- Johan Huizinga

"When the fun goes out of play, most often so does the learning."

- Joanne E. Oppenheim

"The playing adult steps sideward into another reality; the playing child advances forward to new stages of mastery."

- Erik H. Erikson

"The very existence of youth is due in part to the necessity for play; the animal does not play because he is young, he has a period of youth because he must play."

- Karl Groos

"Ritual grew up in sacred play; poetry was born in play and nourished on play; music and dancing were pure play…. We have to conclude, therefore, that civilization is, in its earliest phases, played. It does not come from play…it arises in and as play, and never leaves it."

- Johan Huizinga

"We all need empty hours in our lives or we will have no time to create or dream."

- Robert Coles

"All meaningful, organic, and foundational learning is at heart playful and ludic."

- Marcelo Suárez-Orozco

"Play is training for the unexpected."

- Marc Bekoff

"Creative play is like a spring that bubbles up from deep within a child."

- Joan Almon

"I believe that those boys who take part in rough, hard play outside of school will not find any need for horse-play in school."

- Theodore Roosevelt

"Our brains are built to benefit from play no matter what our age."

- Theresa A. Kestly

"It is a happy talent to know how to play."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Almost all creativity involves purposeful play."

- Abraham Maslow

"So, in all these spheres—in painting, sculpture, drawing, music, singing, dancing, gymnastics, games, sports, writing, and speech—we can carry on to our heart’s content, all through our long lives, complex and specialized forms of exploration and experiment."

- Desmond Morris

"Go and open the door. Maybe outside there’s a tree, or a wood, or a magic city."

- Miroslav Golub

"What do parents owe their young that is more important than a warm and trusting connection to the Earth?"

- Theodore Roszak

"Anything that engages your creative mind—the ability to make connections between unrelated things and imagine new ways to communication—is good for you."

- Girija Kaimal

"A child loves his play, not because it’s easy, but because it’s hard."

- Benjamin Spock

"To the art of working well a civilized race would add the art of playing well."

- George Santayana

"You were wild once. Don’t let them tame you."

- Isadora Duncan

"No matter how old you get, may you always stop to fill your pockets with smooth stones, empty snail shells & other little treasures."

- Nicolette Sowder

"May I grow so tall and bright, so free and wild, so brave and vibrant that when you see me standing you think I am a sunflower."

- Gaby Compres

"Creativity in and of itself is important for remaining health, remaining connected to yourself and connected to the world."

- Christianne Strang

"How wild it was, to let it be."

- Cheryl Strayed

"I like people who get excited about the change of seasons, the sound of the ocean, watching the sunset, the smell of rain and starry nights."

- Brooke Hampton

"Children cannot bounce off the walls if we take away the walls."

- Erin Kenny

"Sunsets, like childhood, are viewed with wonder not just because they are beautiful but because they are fleeting."

- Richard Paul Evans

"Let Nature be your teacher."

- William Wordsworth

"When a flower doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower."

- Alexander Den Heijer

"In nature, nothing is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways and they’re still beautiful."

- Alice Walker

"The things he sees are not just remembered; the form a part of his soul."

- Maria Montessori

"Why try to explain miracle to your kids when you can just have them plant a garden."

- Robert Brault

"When a child gives you a gift, even if it’s a rock they just picked up, exude gratitude. It may be the only the only thing they have to give, and they have chosen to give it to you."

- Dean Jackson

"Even the tiniest of flowers can have the toughest of roots."

- Shannon Mullen

"Some old-fashioned things like fresh air and sunshine are hard to beat."

- Laura Ingalls Wilder

"As soon as I saw you, I knew a grand adventure was about to happen."

- A.A. Milne

"There’s nothing wrong with having a tree as a friend."

- Bob Ross

"Leave the road, take the trails."

- Pythagoras

"I think I’m quite ready for another adventure."

- J.R.R. Tolkien

"There’s no such thing as bad weather, only unsuitable clothing."

- Alfred Wainwright

"Great things are done by a series of small things brought together."

- Vincent van Gogh

"I always defined geology as not only understanding earth but understanding our place on earth."

- Lauret Savoy

"Sad child? Nature. Cranky child? Nature. Bored child? Nature. You’re welcome."

- Penny Whitehouse

"Bad weather looks worse through a window."

- Tom Lehrer

"People tend to forget that play is serious."

- David Hockney

"Play is the mediator of the invisible and visible."

- Dora M. Kalff

"The child amidst his baubles is learning the action of light, motion, gravity, muscular force…"

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Adults play too (or should)."

- Julie Lythcott-Haim

"Surely all God’s people…like to play."

- John Muir

"There is for many a poverty of play."

- D.W. Winnicott

"Human beings need pleasure the way they need vitamins."

- Lionel Tiger

"Play has been man’s most useful preoccupation."

- Frank Caplan

"When a child gives you a gift, even if it’s a rock they just picked up, exude gratitude. It may be the only thing they have to give, and they have chosen to give it to you."

- Dean Jackson

"Culture arises and unfolds in and as play."

- Johan Huizinga

"All around you are spirits, child. They live in the earth, the water, the sky. If you listen, they will guide you."

- Grandmother Willow

"and when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain there woud be no rainbow."

- Gilbert K. Chesterton

"Nature is the best playground"

- Unknown

"May your search through nature lead you to yourself."

"It’s a wondrous thing when the wild calms the child."

"The most memorable days end with the dirtiest clothes."

- Unknown

"It’s a wondrous thing how the wild calms the child."

- Unknown

"If you haven’t seen anything incredible today go outside"

- Unknown

"we all had a playroom growing up. It was called outside."

"Step over ants, put worms back in the grass, rescue baby caterpillars, release spiders back into your garden, open windows for bees to fly home."

"The mud will wash off, but the memories will last a lifetime."

"You are made from the same energy source that has created the oceans, the forests, the mountains, the valleys, and the stars in the sky."

"I love the kind of tired that comes from a lot of fresh air and a little too much sun."

"Because little nature lovers grow into big nature lovers."

"If you choose not to find joy in the snow, you will have less joy in your life but the same amount of snow."

"Your kids will remember the adventures you went on, not the stuff you bought them. Kids outgrow stuff; they never outgrow adventures."

"At the end of the day, your feet should be dirty, your hair should be messy, and your eyes sparkling."

"When life gives you rain, jump in muddy puddles!"

"Kids don’t remember their best day of television."