Chess Quotations | Page 4

There are fixed rules in chess, and no one knows how the game will end.

There can be no finer example of the inspiring powers of competition to shatter the status quo than Hungary's Judit Polgar.

Thanks to the Polgars the adjective 'men's' before events and the 'affirmative action' women's titles such as Woman Grandmaster have become anachronisms.

Kortchnoi's heritage is many-faceted - over the decades he has several times corrected and changed his style. But the main thing has invariably remained his search for chess truth.

The public must come to see that chess is a violent sport. Chess is mental torture.

I dropped the King's Indian in 1997 after one too many bad experiences against Kramnik.

With this mistake I deprived myself of the possibility to make a contribution to the treasury of chess art.

Chess is life in miniature. Chess is struggle, chess is battles

The legend of the best player of chess has been destroyed.

Few things are as psychologically brutal as chess.

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

In conclusion, if you want to unravel the multitude of secrets of chess then don't begrudge the time.

Chess is an art and not a spectator sport.

In chess, bigamy is acceptable but monarchy is absolute.

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

I feel that my chess strengths are still here, .. I believe I can still improve.

Chess is one of the few arts where composition takes place simultaneously with performance

It's true that in chess as in politics, fund-raising and glad-handing matter.

My opponent is Short and the match will be short.

Inevitably the machines must win, but there is still a long way to go before a human on his or her best day is unable to defeat the best computer.

Weaknesses of character are normally shown in a game of chess.

Chess is not dominoes

Perfectly correct chess exists only in theory.

For me, chess is a language, and if it's not my native tongue, it is one I learned via the immersion method at a young age.

In general there is something puzzling about the fact that the most renowned figures in chess - Morphy, Pillsbury, Capablanca and Fischer - were born in America.

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.

Though I would have liked my chances in a rematch in 1998 if I were better prepared, it was clear then that computer superiority over humans in chess had always been just a matter of time.

One does not succeed by sticking to convention. When your opponent can easily anticipate every move you make, your strategy deteriorates and becomes commoditized.

Nowadays games immediately appear on the Internet and thus the life of novelties is measured in hours. Modern professionals do not have the right to be forgetful - it is 'life threatening'.

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

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

Chess is mental torture.

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 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.

... Tarrasch's 'dogmas' are not eternal truisms, but merely instructional material presented in an accessible and witty form, those necessary rudiments from which one can begin to grasp the secrets of chess ...

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.

Caissa, the goddess of chess, had punished me for my conservative play, for betraying my nature.

Capablanca possessed an amazing ability to quickly see into a position and intuitively grasp its main features. His style, one of the purest, most crystal-clear in the entire history of chess, astonishes one with his logic.

One does not succeed by sticking to convention.

tennis is a 100-mph chess match.

Not winning a tournament is not an option for me, unless it's no longer theoretically possible - then of course winning becomes impossible. But up to that point, not winning is just not an option.

I am not some sort of freak. I might be very good at chess but I'm just a normal person.

I played like a child.

Contrary to many young Colleagues, I do believe that it makes sense to study the Classics.

The Nanjing games are homework by Garry Kasparov and me, [...] Today's game was provided by Garry.

I learnt an enormous amount, but there came a point where I found there was too much stress. It was no fun any more. Outside of the chessboard I avoid conflict, so I thought this wasn't worth it.

I don't think there is a thing like overconfidence in chess. It's always better to be too confident than too reluctant.

Poets do not go mad, but chess players do.

Chess is a cure for headaches.

Diplomacy is a game of chess in which the nations are checkmated.

If trading is like chess, then macro is like three-dimensional chess.

Each life is a game of chess that went to hell on the seventh move(...)

Chess is a time game, it’s a game of patience. That pretty much defines how I run the ball.

In chess you might find a good move. Then you might find a better move. But take your time. Find the best move.

I don't know if I went to the gym, [but] Woody [Harrelson] was 24, and at that point I was like 37, which is when you realize you're no longer 24. So in walked Woody, who was instantly great, but offstage, it was [all] testosterone. We'll arm-wrestle. I still have, like, tendinitis in my elbow.Woody cleaned everybody's clock in everything. Then we got less physical and went to chess, and he whipped our asses with chess.

Chess is the only game greater than its players.

Watching the season for me is about watching the chess matches.

Chess is one long regret.

Tennis is physical chess.

Pawns are born free, yet they are everywhere in chains

The present situation in physics is as if we know chess, but we don't know one or two rules.

Chess you don't learn, chess you understand.

No Chess Grandmaster is normal; they only differ in the extent of their madness

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

Chess and boxing have a lot in common, as both sports rely on the right strategy.

I would never suggest to anyone that they drop school for chess. First of all even if you can make it in chess, your social skills need to be developed there.

I'll take my five positions per second any day, thank you

Chess is like a language, the top players are very fluent at it. Talent can be developed scientifically but you have to find first what you are good at.

Nowadays, when you're not a grandmaster at 14, you can forget about it

I would prefer chess to become part of the Olympic Games. This would also lead to chess become more accepted as a sport in general.

For every door the computers have closed they have opened a new one.

Chess is a matter of daily training.

In this respect, I suppose I'm the total opposite of Garry [Kasparov]. With his very emotive body language at the [chess]board he shows and displays all his emotions. I don't.

Computers have changed the World of Chess.

Chess is so deep, I simply feel lost.

It is rightly said that the most difficult thing in chess is winning a won position

Chess makes man wiser and clear-sighted.

I am not a chess historian - I myself am a piece of chess history, which no one can avoid. I will not write about myself, but I am sure that someone will write...

Chess is not for timid souls.

Chess is intellectual gymnastics.

Chess is a sad waste of brains.

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 problems demand from the composer the same virtues that characterize all worthwhile art: originality, invention, conciseness, harmony, complexity, and splendid insincerity

Of all my Russian books, the defense contains and diffuses the greatest 'warmth' which may seem odd seeing how supremely abstract Chess is supposed to be

Chess is an effective means to educate and train the human intellect.

You know, comrade Pachman, I don't enjoy being a Minister, I would rather play chess like you, or make a revolution in Venezuela.

Life is a kind of Chess, with struggle, competition, good and ill events.

Life is a kind of chess.

Chess is the gymnasium of the mind.

The higher powers of the reflective intellect are more decidedly and more usefully tasked by the unostentatious game of draughts than by all the elaborate frivolity of chess.

I have always disliked the fierce competitive spirit embodied in that highly intellectual game.

Chess is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something very clever, when they are only wasting their time

This game the Persian Magi did invent, The force of Eastern wisdom to express: From thence to busy Europeans sent, And styled by modern Lombards pensive chess.

I played Chess with him and would have beaten him sometimes only he always took back his last move, and ran the game out differently

What work I have done I have done because it has been play. If it had been work I shouldn't have done it.

Never copy yourself, always copy someone else.

You may have the bishop pair but I have the ultimate advantage; I am the better player!

When you see a good move, sit on your hands and find a better one.

Chess is too difficult to be a game and not serious enough to be a science or an art.

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.