Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.

We have treated our most serious adversaries such as Iran and North Korea in the most juvenile manner - by giving them the silent treatment. In so doing we have weakened not strengthened our bargaining position and our leadership.

In addition to removing our democratically elected government Israel wants to sow dissent among Palestinians by claiming that there is a serious leadership rivalry among us. I am compelled to dispel this notion definitively.

I am endlessly fascinated that playing football is considered a training ground for leadership but raising children isn't. Hey it made me a better leader: you have to take a lot of people's needs into account you have to look down the road. Trying to negotiate getting a couple of kids to watch the same TV show requires serious diplomacy.

That was really so upsetting when you are trying to pass on some very serious knowledge and be basically treated worse than a student coming off the street because his father pays the tuition. Come on. Give me a break. This is no school. This is a joke.

A serious problem in America is the gap between academe and the mass media which is our culture. Professors of humanities with all their leftist fantasies have little direct knowledge of American life and no impact whatever on public policy.

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.

I think we need to ask serious questions about how we engage militarily when we engage militarily and on what basis we engage militarily. What kind of intelligence do we have to justify a military engagement?

I take parenting incredibly seriously. I want to be there for my kids and help them navigate the world and develop skills emotional intelligence to enjoy life and I'm lucky to be able to do that and have two healthy normal boys.

But it is equally incontrovertible that if our intelligence gathering process is seriously flawed we had better find out and find out fast if we are to avoid another Sept. 11.

The actions that we take on the counterterrorism front again are to take actions against individuals where we believe that the intelligence base is so strong and the nature of the threat is so grave and serious as well as imminent that we have no recourse except to take this action that may involve a lethal strike.

I would like to take you seriously but to do so would affront your intelligence.

I would like to take you seriously but to do so would be an affront to your intelligence.

A child who has never fantasized about having other parents is seriously lacking in imagination.

My parents thought it was nice to develop my imagination but they never seriously thought that anything would ever come of it. They said that I couldn't be an actress because I would be taller than all my leading men so I thought I would be a writer instead.

Nothing in man is more serious than his sense of humor it is the sign that he wants all the truth.

I think humor is a very serious thing. I use it as a way of weakening the reader's defenses so that I can more easily take him to something more.

I want to be taken seriously as the type of musician that plays stuff like an electric rake. I mean how seriously do you take someone like Spike Jones? They take him pretty seriously - a really good musician who made a great contribution in terms of humor which is part of what I try to do too.

You can get through very serious and sometimes horrible and sometimes embarrassing and very awkward situations with humor. It gives us a way out.

Bands from Akron have a sense of humor and don't tend to take themselves too seriously.

Jazz can be so serious no sense of humor.

While it is true that Frank had a great sense of humor he was also very serious about composing music. In reality there are only a handful of skilled players who can play his most complex pieces. It takes a lot of patience to learn and requires a fantastic memory.

We are really living the American dream to be a successful brand in the States and in Europe and to steep ourselves in our heritage. But we do it with a sense of humor. We don't take ourselves too seriously in fashion.

We do not take humor seriously enough.