Viktor Korchnoi Quotations

The human element, the human flaw and the human nobility - those are the reasons that chess matches are won or lost.

Every time I win a tournament I have to think that there is something wrong with modern chess.

At one point, after having already become a Grandmaster and champion of the USSR,I suddenly realized that I am heading for a dead end... I had to start everything over. But how hard and agonizing it is when you're no longer 16, but twice that age!

[Harry] Kasparov and [Anatoly] Karpov have something in common. They both want to become deputies of the Russian State Duma.

The aim was simple: to deprive Karpov of his favourite occupation - standing at the board, staring straight at his opponent. While I was wearing these glasses, all he could admire was his own reflection.

It is unpleasant for the players, when the organizers arrange for play to take place in the morning. The games from such last rounds, in view of the large number of mistakes, are not fit for publication!

Those who think that it is easy to play chess are mistaken. During a game a player lives on his nerves, and at the same time he must be perfectly composed.

Chess players, people who travel all over the world, should be trusted or else not sent anywhere at all. Why are these four people (Antoshion and three other official 'minders') sent along to supervise us? With their meagre experience, all that thay did was interfere, more than ever before. And when they were needed, they weren't to be found ...

I don't study; I create.

As a rule, the more mistakes there are in a game, the more memorable it remains, because you have suffered and worried over each mistake at the board.

Sometimes I even say that I have surpassed Lasker in using psychology. How? Well, sometimes I use psychology with a portion of risk. That is something else, something that Lasker wouldn't allow.

All obvious moves look dubious in analysis after the game.

Chess you don't learn, chess you understand.

Skeletons of mice are often to be found in coconuts, for it is easier to get in, slim and greedy, than to get out, appeased but fat.

The whole life with a wife is like an end game with two bishops of different colors.

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.

It is a gross overstatement, but in chess, it can be said I play against my opponent over the board and against myself on the clock.