Chess Quotes

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.

Snooker is just chess with balls.

Just as one's imagination is stirred by a girl's smile, so is one's imagination stirred by the possibilities of chess.

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.

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

Fischer is Fischer, but a knight is a knight!

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.

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

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

Fischer is the greatest genius to descend from the chess heavens.

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.

Some sacrifices are sound; the rest are mine

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

Psychology is the most important factor in chess.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Chess is the art which expresses the science of logic.

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

Without error there can be no brilliancy

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

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.

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

In complicated positions, Bobby Fischer hardly had to be afraid of anybody

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.

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

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.

Chess makes man wiser and clear-sighted.

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

Chess is intellectual gymnastics.

Chess is eminently and emphatically the philospher's game.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

Chess is a beautiful mistress.

Even a poor plan is better than no plan at all.

Chess is beautiful enough to waste your life for.

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

Morphy was probably the greatest genius of them all

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

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.

Attack! Always Attack!

I am more strongly confirmed than ever in the belief that the time devoted to chess is literally frittered away.