We are trapped by language to such a degree that every attempt to formulate insight is a play on words. — Niels Bohr
I think the play on words for 'Punky' Brewster has definitely played itself out. — Jordana Brewster
Witticism. A sharp and clever remark, usually quoted and seldom noted; what the Philistine is pleased to call a joke. — Ambrose Bierce
Every poet knows the pun is Pierian, that it springs from the same soil as the Muse?a matching and shifting of vowels and consonants, an adroit assonance sometimes derided as jackassonance. — Louis Untermeyer
Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them. — Nathaniel Hawthorne
Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prism, are all very good words for the lips. — Charles Dickens
When putting words together is good to do it with nicety and caution, your elegance and talent will be evident if by putting ordinary words together you create a new voice. — Horace
Dare to err and to dream. Deep meaning often lies in childish plays. — Friedrich von Schiller
A pun is the lowest form of humor, unless you thought of it yourself. — Doug Larson
Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assaults of thoughts on the unthinking. — John Maynard Keynes
Language upon a silvered tongue affords enchantment enough. — Salman Rushdie
Words are living things. They have personality, point of view... agenda. — Hannibal
Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination. — Ludwig Wittgenstein
Words want to find chimes with each other, things want to connect. — Paul Muldoon
Even on the most serious ballads, I'll throw in a tongue-in-cheek remark. — Brad Paisley
Play On Words Image Quotes
A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart, and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words.
Wordplay Quotes
They've promised that dreams can come true - but forgot to mention that nightmares are dreams, too. — Oscar Wilde
Movements have narratives. They tell stories, because they are not just about rearranging economics and politics. They also rearrange meaning. And they're not just about redistributing the goods. They're about figuring out what is good. — Marshall Ganz
A cement mixer collided with a prison van on the Kingston Pass. Motorists are asked to be on the lookout for 16 hardened criminals. — Ronnie Corbett
Are you tired? You should be! You've been running through my mind all day. — Gary Barlow
Many a man has failed because he had his wishbone where his backbone should have been. — Ronald Reagan
I probably spent more time listening to albums than writing songs. But I think that gave me all the tricks in terms of wordplay, from how I pronounced my words to the actual delivery. — Kendrick Lamar
You will continue to suffer if you have an emotional reaction to everything that is said to you. True power is sitting back and observing everything with logic. If words control your that means everyone can control you. Breathe and allow things to pass.
You know what they say about big hitters...the woods are full of them. — Jimmy Demaret
That woman speaks eighteen languages, and can't say 'No' in any of them. — Dorothy Parker
I'm not a vegetarian! I'm a dessertarian! — Bill Watterson
I ain’t no hipster, but girl I can make your hips stir. — Mac Miller
I compose my own stuff. I've been writing songs with words. I've been playing more on the keyboard because I can transpose it to sheet music on the computer. — Alicia Witt
Dreams, puns, elisions, plays on words and similar tricks that we ordinarily think of as frivolous, all play a surprising and somewhat disconcerting role in the communication of important and serious feelings. — Milton H. Erickson
Be sure to taste your words before you spit them out.
You and I are players, God's our coach, and we're playing the biggest game of all. We have a loving God that made us. We need to get on His team. It says in His word, there's only one way to Him and that's through Jesus Christ. — Joe Gibbs
I would rather play with forked lightning, or take in my hand living wires with their fiery current, than to speak a reckless word against any servant of Christ, or idly repeat the slanderous darts which thousands of Christians are hurling on others, to the hurt of their own souls and bodies. — A. B. Simpson
To suggest that war can prevent war is a base play on words and a despicable form of warmongering. The objective of any who sincerely believe in peace clearly must be to exhaust every honorable recourse in the effort to save the peace. The world has had ample evidence that war begets only conditions that beget further war. — Ralph Bunche
Despots play their part in the works of thinkers. Fettered words are terrible words. The writer doubles and trebles the power of his writing when a ruler imposes silence on the people. Something emerges from that enforced silence, a mysterious fullness which filters through and becomes steely in the thought. — Victor Hugo
Everybody in hip-hop discriminates against gay people. Matter of fact, the exact opposite word of 'hip-hop,' I think, is 'gay.' Like yo, you play a record and if it's wack, 'That's gay, dog!' And I wanna just come on TV and just tell my rappers, just tell my friends, 'Yo, stop it, fam.' — Kanye West
This Lullaby is only a few words, a simple run of chords, quiet here in this spare room, but you can hear it, hear it, wherever you may go, even if I let you down, this lullaby plays on. — Sarah Dessen
I always think of shade as being full of light. That is why I like to use the word shade rather than light and shadow. Shade seems to play over the thing, envelop it, better define it, while shadow seems to fall on the thing and stain the surface with darks. — John French Sloan
I played [baseball] in college, so it wasn't that much a stretch. But I would say the main thing for guys who hadn't played before it's just one word - swagger. If you have swagger on the field, and look like you know how to play, that's 90% of it. — Tyler Hoechlin
There are times where I would keep three typewriters on a table, and I'd have three complete thoughts going. With computers, you make folders, files - I don't know about those things. I have sheaves of paper polluted with words and paragraphs. I found it a good tool for me. And it keeps your hands strong for guitar playing. — Eddie Vedder
I'm well past the age where I'm acceptable. You get to a certain age and you are forbidden access. You're not going to get the kind of coverage that you would like in music magazines, you're not going to get played on radio and you're not going to get played on television. I have to survive on word of mouth. — David Bowie
Rather than the word career, I prefer to discuss how you make a positive I pact on the world. This could mean raising your children, professional activities, non-profit work, or various other actions you take that impact others. I have found that, at all ages, people want to be needed and play a role in impacting the world. — Robert S. Kaplan
I can play a song for somebody, and when certain parts come on, I cringe. I might not like my vocal or the way I sang a certain word. Playing intimate shows is when I feel the most vulnerable; you can hear and see everything. Those are the most rewarding as well. — T. Mills
People have played on words and pretended to believe that refusing to grant a meaning to life necessarily leads to declaring that it is not worth living. In truth, there is no necessary common measure between these two judgments. — Albert Camus
Trying to capture the physicists' precise mathematical description of the quantum world with our crude words and mental images is like playing Chopin with a boxing glove on one hand and a catcher's mitt on the other. — George Johnson
I could dance with you till the cows come home. Better still, I'll dance with the cows and you come home." Groucho Marx was never one to pass up an opportunity for a play on words and this occurs in his dialogue of the 1933 film Duck Soup. — Groucho Marx
What I was proud of was that I used very few parts to build a computer that could actually speak words on a screen and type words on a keyboard and run a programming language that could play games. And I did all this myself. — Steve Wozniak
My iPhone stays on. All my friends and family know that I hate the phone, so no one calls me on it. I just use it to play Words With Friends and take pictures of cute shoes. — Jasika Nicole
My mother said I should have a 'change of scenery.' The word scenery made be think of a play. And as we were driving around, it made sense that way. Because no matter how much the scenery changed, we were still on the same stage. — David Levithan
[Calvin and Hobbes are playing Scrabble.]
Calvin: Ha! I've got a great word and it's on a Double word score box!
Hobbes: ZQFMGB isn't a word! It doesn't even have a vowel!
Calvin: It is so a word! It's a worm found in New Guinea! Everyone knows that!
Hobbes: I'm looking it up.
Calvin: You do, and I'll look up that 12-letter word you played with all the Xs and Js!
Hobbes: What's your score for ZQFMGB?
Calvin: 957. — Bill Watterson
Profound thoughts and profound experiences get revealed to be tricks that we play on ourselves, and poetry gets revealed to be just, like, some dumb words that somebody put in an interesting order. — Phil Elvrum
I come alive when I have assisted in bringing out the printed word on the stage, you know, and I enjoy directing plays. It's a tactile process, theatre, unlike a number of other forms of the creative work. — Wole Soyinka
More frightening to me than any policy or politician is the ease with which the public is played for fools with words. The latest example is the 'Employee Freedom of Choice Act,' a bill that will do away with secret ballot elections among workers voting on whether to be represented by a union. It is an open invitation to intimidation - which is to say, loss of freedom of choice. — Thomas Sowell
Perhaps [the critics are right and] the drama is played out now and Jesus is safely dead and buried. Perhaps. It is ironical and entertaining to consider that at least once in the world's history those words might have been said with complete conviction, and that was on the eve of the Resurrection. — Dorothy L. Sayers
I was sleeping in the woods one night after a gig we'd played somewhere, when I saw this girl appear before me. That girl was Emily. (on how he wrote "See Emily Play") "Chapter 24"-that was from the "I Ching", there was someone around who was very into that, most of the words came straight off that. "Lucifer Sam" was another one-it didn't mean much to me at the time, but then three or four months later it came to mean a lot. — Syd Barrett
Dogs are wonderful, and in many ways unique. But they are remarkably unremarkable in their intellectual and experiential capacities. Pigs are every bit as intelligent and feeling, by any sensible definition of the words. They can't hop into the back of a Volvo, but they can fetch, run and play, be mischievous, and reciprocate affection. So why don't they get to curl up by the fire? Why can't they at least be spared being tossed on the fire? — Jonathan Safran Foer
Listening to someone talk isn't at all like listening to their words played over on a machine. What you hear when you have a face before you is never what you hear when you have before you a winding tape. — Oriana Fallaci
I heard the bells on Christmas Day. Their old familiar carols play. And wild and sweet the words repeat. Of peace on earth goodwill to men. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Despots play their part in the works of thinkers. Fettered words are terrible words. The writer doubles and trebles the power of his writing when a ruler imposes silence on the people. Something emerges from that enforced silence, a mysterious fullness which filters through and becomes steely in the thought. Repression in history leads to conciseness in the historian, and the rocklike hardness of much celebrated prose is due to the tempering of the tyrant. — Victor Hugo
The other part of our proposal that gets the 'dittoheads' upset is our suggestion that the commercial radio station owners either play by the rules or pay. In other words, if they don't want to be subject to local criticism of how they are meeting their license obligations, they should pay to support public broadcasters who will operate on behalf of the local community. — Mark Lloyd
When I did plays in high school and college, I never remember memorizing my lines, but once I had blocking, I had all my lines memorized. Once I had movement associated with words, it was fine. Before I had blocking, it was just text on a page. Once it became embodied, it was much easier. — Greta Gerwig
So what this is is us, our personalities refined down on to a stage performance. In other words, the way we play is the end product of the way we live - we live in the cities, you see. — Alice Cooper
You get to a certain age, and you are forbidden access. You're not going to get the kind of coverage that you would like in music magazines; you're not going to get played on radio, and you're not going to get played on television. I have to survive on word of mouth. — David Bowie
Now this relaxation of the mind from work consists on playful words or deeds. Therefore it becomes a wise and virtuous man to have recourse to such things at times. — Thomas Aquinas
At the core of these movies, Saw One and Saw Two, it's a very real situation. A guy cheats on his wife and didn't value what he had. It's the same thing in my story. Being a dad and playing someone whose last words to his son were 'go to hell'. I say to my son, the last thing I say is 'I love you'. — Donnie Wahlberg
There are moments on songs like "Violet" where it's still shrouded in metaphor, but it's quite, I don't know, explicit. And then there are songs like "Boyfriend," where obviously it's straight up, very, very simple. It's fun to play around with words; I really enjoy doing that, so I don't think I'll ever stop, but it's also been nice to have messages on there that I can say flat out and that people appreciate. — Marika Hackman
Let's not use the term democracy as a play on words which is what people commonly do, using human rights as a pretext. Those people that really violate human rights [the West] violate human rights from all perspectives. Typically on the subject of human rights regarding the nations from the south and Cuba they say, "They are not democratic societies, they do not respect human rights, and they do not respect freedom of speech". — Alejandro Castro Espin
I had an Indian face, but I never saw it as Indian, in part because in America the Indian was dead. The Indian had been killed in cowboy movies, or was playing bingo in Oklahoma. Also, in my middle-class Mexican family indio was a bad word, one my parents shy away from to this day. That's one of the reasons, of course, why I always insist, in my bratty way, on saying, Soy indio! - "I am an Indian!" — Richard Rodriguez
Whenever anyone does as this ad does, plays the actual words of Donald Trump on national television, his response is to yell, "Liar." Their strategy is simply to yell, "Liar, liar, liar." — Ted Cruz
There's no way to play it cool when you meet Paul McCartney. You just start sweating, you trip over your words. Everyone kind of reverts back to being a 10-year-old girl. You can't help it. He's one of the only people on planet Earth that everyone knows who he is. Everyone. — Rob Huebel
My parents said I'd always been attracted to music from an early age. The classic story is I started singing before I talked. My Mom would play me tapes, and I'd be able to sing them back perfectly. She said my pitch was dead on, but I'd fill in nonsense syllables for all the rest of it. The words would be all garbled, because I didn't know how to talk yet. — Vienna Teng
I tried to think of a witty play on Every picture tells a thousand words, but then the whole word/picture thing collapsed on me. — Douglas Coupland
In Conclusion
Which quotation resonated with you best? Did you enjoy our collection of play on words quotes? Or may be you have a slogan about play on words to suggest. Let us know using our contact form.
Citation
Feel free to cite and use any of the quotes in this collection of play on words quotations. For popular citation styles(APA, Chicago, MLA), please use this citation page.