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."
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
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
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
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
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
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
42.
I'd like to always be romantic in chess. Sadly, this doesn't always work like that.
Mikhail Tal
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
50.
Your only task in the opening is to reach a playable middlegame.
Lajos Portisch