💬 SenQuotes.com

Chess Quotes

1.
In my games I have sometimes found a combination intuitively simply feeling that it must be there. Yet I was not able to translate my thought processes into normal human language.
Mikhail Tal

"In my gaming, I have on occasion uncovered a pattern by an instinctive perception that it was latent. Nevertheless, I was unable to articulate the mental steps taken in a manner comprehensible to ordinary people."
Authors on Chess Quotes: Garry Kasparov Bobby Fischer Alexander Alekhine Mikhail Botvinnik Anatoly Karpov Savielly Tartakower Magnus Carlsen Wilhelm Steinitz Boris Spassky Siegbert Tarrasch Mikhail Tal Jose Raul Capablanca Eugene Znosko-Borovsky Emanuel Lasker Viswanathan Anand David Bronstein Alexander Kotov Aron Nimzowitsch Vladimir Kramnik Bent Larsen Viktor Korchnoi Samuel Reshevsky Mark Dvoretsky Vasily Smyslov Richard Reti Max Euwe Paul Morphy Larry Evans Gerald Abrahams Reuben Fine Paul Keres Edmar Mednis Andrew Soltis
2.
Snooker is just chess with balls.
Clive James

Billiards is akin to a game of strategy.
3.
Just as one's imagination is stirred by a girl's smile, so is one's imagination stirred by the possibilities of chess.
Mikhail Tal

One's musings are aroused by a female's grin, similarly as they are provoked by the prospects of chess.
4.
Botvinnik's right! When he says such things, then he's right. Usually, I prefer not to study chess but to play it. For me chess is more an art than a science. It's been said that Alekhine and I played similar chess, except that he studied more. Yes, perhaps, but I have to say that he played, too.
Mikhail Tal

5.
The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman. The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life.
Paul Morphy

6.
Fischer is Fischer, but a knight is a knight!
Mikhail Tal

7.
We are in truth but pieces on this chess board of life, which in the end we leave, only to drop one by one into the grave of nothingness.
Omar Khayyam

8.
Without technique it is impossible to reach the top in chess, and therefore we all try to borrow from Capablanca his wonderful, subtle technique.
Mikhail Tal

9.
Many Chess players were surprised when after the game, Fischer quietly explained: 'I had already analyzed this possibility' in a position which I thought was not possible to foresee from the opening
Mikhail Tal

10.
Fischer is the greatest genius to descend from the chess heavens.
Mikhail Tal

11.
Between rounds of speed chess I read enough of a programming manual to teach myself to write programs on the school's DEC mainframe in the language Basic.
Eric Allin Cornell

12.
Some sacrifices are sound; the rest are mine
Mikhail Tal

13.
None of the great players has been so incomprehensible to the majority of amateurs and even masters, as Emanuel Lasker.
Jose Raul Capablanca

14.
Psychology is the most important factor in chess.
Alexander Alekhine

15.
Far be it from me to force anyone into either chess or dressage, but if you choose to do so yourself, in my opinion there is only one way: follow the rules.
Lars von Trier

16.
In mathematics, if I find a new approach to a problem, another mathematician might claim that he has a better, more elegant solution. In chess, if anybody claims he is better than I, I can checkmate him.
Emanuel Lasker

17.
There was one point in high school actually when I was on the chess team, marching band, model United Nations and debate club all at the same time. And I would spend time with the computer club after school. And I had just quit pottery club, which I was in junior high, but I let that go.
Rainn Wilson

18.
If you are weak in the endgame, you must spend more time analysing studies; in your training games you must aim at transposing to endgames, which will help you to acquire the requisite experience.
Mikhail Botvinnik

19.
Chess is the art which expresses the science of logic.
Mikhail Botvinnik

20.
Which do I prefer? Sex or chess? It depends on the position.
Boris Spassky

21.
Bobby Fischer has an enormous knowledge of chess and his familiarity with the chess literature of the USSR is immense.
Boris Spassky

22.
Without error there can be no brilliancy
Emanuel Lasker

23.
The only positive contribution to chess from Fischer in the last 20 years.
Viktor Korchnoi

24.
In chess so much depends on opening theory, so the champions before the last century did not know as much as I do and other players do about opening theory. So if you just brought them back from the dead they wouldn't do well. They'd get bad openings.
Bobby Fischer

25.
Losing can persuade you to change what doesn't need to be changed, and winning can convince you everything is fine even if you are on the brink of disaster.
Garry Kasparov

26.
In complicated positions, Bobby Fischer hardly had to be afraid of anybody
Paul Keres

27.
The winner is the one who makes the next-to-last mistake.
Savielly Tartakower

28.
It is true that even across the Himalayan barrier India has sent to the west, such gifts as grammar and logic, philosophy and fables, hypnotism and chess, and above all numerals and the decimal system.
Will Durant

29.
Chess is intellectual gymnastics.
Wilhelm Steinitz

30.
Chess makes man wiser and clear-sighted.
Vladimir Putin

31.
Chess is as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you can find outside an advertising agency.
Raymond Chandler

32.
I try to help developing junior chess. When I lived in USSR, I got a lot of free help from very good coaches - now I am trying to repay that debt.
Boris Spassky

33.
Chess is eminently and emphatically the philospher's game.
Paul Morphy

34.
During a chess tournament a master must envisage himself as a cross between an ascetic monk and a beast of prey.
Alexander Alekhine

35.
It is not possible to become a great player without having learned how to analyse deeply and accurately.
Mark Dvoretsky

36.
You can become a big master in chess only if you see your mistakes and short-comings. Exactly the same as in life itself.
Alexander Alekhine

37.
Chess helps you to concentrate, improve your logic. It teaches you to play by the rules and take responsibility for your actions, how to problem solve in an uncertain environment.
Garry Kasparov

38.
You know I'm finished with the old chess because it's all just a lot of book and memorization you know.
Bobby Fischer

39.
Yeah, I used to dress badly until I was about sixteen. But people just didn't seem to have enough respect for me, you know And I didn't like that, so I decided I'd have to show them they weren't any better than me, you know? They were sort of priding themselves. They would say, 'He beat us at chess, but he's still just an uncouth kid.' So I decided to dress up.
Bobby Fischer

40.
The ideal in chess can only be a collective image, but in my opinion it is Capablanca who most closely approaches this.
Anatoly Karpov

41.
Chess is a beautiful mistress.
Bent Larsen

42.
I'd like to always be romantic in chess. Sadly, this doesn't always work like that.
Mikhail Tal

43.
Even a poor plan is better than no plan at all.
Mikhail Chigorin

44.
Chess is beautiful enough to waste your life for.
Hans Ree

45.
Fischer was a master of clarity and a king of artful positioning. His opponents would see where he was going but were powerless to stop him
Bruce Pandolfini

46.
Morphy was probably the greatest genius of them all
Bobby Fischer

47.
Analysis, if it is really carried out with a complete concentration of his powers, forms and completes a chess player.
Lev Polugaevsky

48.
I don't keep any close friends. I don't keep any secrets. I don't need friends. I just tell everybody everything, that's all.
Bobby Fischer

49.
The only good Rook is a working Rook!
Samuel Reshevsky

50.
Your only task in the opening is to reach a playable middlegame.
Lajos Portisch