Garry Kasparov Quotes

I've met enough KGB colonels in my life.

If you wish to succeed, you must brave the risk of failure.

A grandmaster needs to retain thousands of games in his head, for games are to him what the words of their mother tongue are to ordinary people, or notes or scores to musicians.

It was not about losing my mental power; it's about not feeling good about my contribution to the game.

I think Russians today have a distorted picture of capitalism, liberal democracy and market economy.

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.

At the end of the day, it's all about money.

Excelling at chess has long been considered a symbol of more general intelligence. That is an incorrect assumption in my view, as pleasant as it might be.

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.

Enormous self-belief, intuition, the ability to take a risk at a critical moment and go in for a very dangerous play with counter-chances for the opponent - it is precisely these qualities that distinguish great players.

I think we have very steady records of President Putin, who inherited the country with democratic values.

Ukraine had quite serious impact on the many Russians. They could see that ordinary people in Ukraine which is a bordering state, very close to Russia, the people of this state are, they didn't want to tolerate anymore the power abuse by Ukrainian officials.

Putin is like Al Capone.

When I was preparing for one term's work in the Botvinnik school I had to spend a lot of time on king and pawn endings. So when I came to a tricky position in my own games I knew the winning method.

Solving new problems is what keeps us moving forward as individuals and as a society, so don't back down.

Nervous energy is the ammunition we take into any mental battle. If you don't have enough of it, your concentration will fade. If you have a surplus, the results will explode.

We think about time as something not to waste, not as something to invest.

This is the essential element that cannot be measured by any analysis or device, and I believe it's at the heart of success in all things: the power of intuition and the ability to harness and use it like a master.

Ultimately, what separates a Winner from a Loser at the Grandmaster level is the Willingness to do the Unthinkable.

Boris Vasilievich was the only top-class player of his generation who played gambits regularly and without fear ... Over a period of 30 years he did not lose a single game with the King's Gambit, and among those defeated were numerous strong players of all generations, from Averbakh, Bronstein and Fischer, to Seirawan.

The loss of my childhood was the price for becoming the youngest world champion in history. When you have to fight every day from a young age, your soul can be contaminated. I lost my childhood. I never really had it. Today I have to be careful not to become cruel, because I became a soldier too early.

It is better to have a bad plan than no plan.

Attackers may sometimes regret bad moves, but it is much worse to forever regret an opportunity you allowed to pass you by.

You can't overestimate the importance of psychology in chess, and as much as some players try to downplay it, I believe that winning requires a constant and strong psychology not just at the board but in every aspect of your life.

Any experienced player knows how a change in the character of the play influences your psychological mood.

Without a goal [maneuvering is] aimless. You might be a master tactician, but you'll have no sense of strategy.

Tactics involve calculations that can tax the human brain, but when you boil them down, they are actually the simplest part of chess and are almost trivial compared to strategy.

The worst enemy of the strategist is the clock. Time trouble... Reduces us all to pure reflex and reaction, tactical play. Emotion and instinct cloud our strategic vision when there is no time for proper evaluation.

The biggest problem I see among people who want to excel in chess – and in business and in life in general – is not trusting their instincts enough.

The only way to fail for me is just not to try.

Chess continues to advance over time, so the players of the future will inevitably surpass me in the quality of their play, assuming the rules and regulations allow them to play serious chess. But it will likely be a long time before anyone spends 20 consecutive years as number, one as I did.

In chess, bigamy is acceptable but monarchy is absolute.

Winning is not a secret that belongs to a very few, winning is something that we can learn by studying ourselves, studying the environment and making ourselves ready for any challenge that is in front of us.

I have some strategical vision, I could calculate some few moves ahead and I have an intellect that is badly missed in the country which is run by generals and colonels.

Chess is mental torture.

One does not succeed by sticking to convention.

It's not enough to be talented. It's not enough to work hard and to study late into the night. You must also become intimately aware of the methods you use to reach your decisions.

For inspiration I look to those great players who consistently found original ways to shock their opponents. None did this better than the eighth world champion, Mikhail Tal. The "Magician of Riga" rose to become champion in 1960 at age twenty-three and became famous for his aggressive, volatile play.

The ability to work hard for days on end without losing focus is a talent. The ability to keep absorbing new information after many hours of study is a talent.

When your house is on fire, you cant be bothered with the neighbors. Or, as we say in Chess, if your King is under attack you don't worry about losing a Pawn on the Queen's side

Russian Parliament today is a bunch of puppets that just fall in with the instructions from Kremlin.

By this measure (on the gap between Fischer & his contemporaries), I consider him the greatest world champion

By strictly observing Botvinnik's rule regarding the thorough analysis of one's own games, with the years I have come to realize that this provides the foundation for the continuous development of chess mastery.

Chess is a unique cognitive nexus, a place where art and science come together in the human mind and are then refined and improved by experience.

In chess the rules are fixed and the outcome is unpredictable, whereas in Putin's Russia the rules are unpredictable and the outcome is fixed.

I see my own style as being a symbiosis of the styles of Alekhine, Tal and Fischer.

The situation in Georgia is determined by the breakaway regions Abkhazia and South Ossetia. While we must acknowledge the reforms initiated by Mikheil Saakashvili that drastically lowered the level of corruption and authoritarian structures in the Georgian state, under the above-mentioned circumstances, the ruling elite must keep a firm grip on the country.

Chess strength in general and chess strength in a specific match are by no means one and the same thing.

Putin can't afford to leave the office because he will be in real danger of being prosecuted for things he and his people did during their stay in power.

Boris Nemtsov and I began to argue after Putin's return to the presidency in 2012. In my opinion, there was no longer a realistic chance to achieve regime change through peaceful political means, or real elections. Boris, on the other hand, never lost this hope. He felt that my assessment was premature and said: "You have to live a long time to see changes in Russia." He was deprived of that opportunity.