Wilhelm Steinitz Quotations

A sacrifice is best refuted by accepting it

Chess is so inspiring that I do not believe a good player is capable of having an evil thought during the game.

Only the player with the initiative has the right to attack

When you have an advantage, you are obliged to attack; otherwise you are endangered to lose the advantage.

Fame, I have already. Now I need the money.

I have never in my life played the French Defence, which is the dullest of all openings

A win by an unsound combination, however showy, fills me with artistic horror

I do not believe a good player is capable of having an evil thought during the game.

The refutation of a sacrifice frequently consists in its acceptance.

Chess is difficult, it demands work, serious reflection and zealous research.

Have you ever seen a monkey examining a watch?

I play my king all over the board. I make him fight!

Capture of the adverse King is the ultimate but not the first object of the game

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...

I shall accord to myself the honor of inscribing myself as an applicant for the American citizenship which according to law I can obtain only after five years residence in this country. And I shall yield to no one of my future countrymen in patriotism. I consider America now my real home.

Chess is so inspiring that I do not believe a good player is capable of haviong an evil thought during the game.

I am fully and entirely concentrated on the board. I never even consider my opponent's personality. So far as I am concerned, my opponent might as well be an abstraction or an automaton.

The king pawn and the queen pawn are the only ones to be moved in the early part of the game.

I would rather die in America than live in England. I would rather lose a match in America than win one in England. I have come to the conclusion that I neither mean to die soon or to lose the match!

Chess is not for timid souls.

The task of the positional player is systematically to accumulate slight advantages and try to convert temporary advantages into permanent ones, otherwise the player with the better position runs the risk of losing it.

I may be an old lion, but I can still bite someone's hand off if he puts it in my mouth.

Chess is not for the faint-hearted; it absorbs a person entirely. To get to the bottom of this game, he has to give himself up into slavery. Chess is difficult, it demands work, serious reflection and zealous research.

The King is a fighting piece. Use it!

In the ending the king is a powerful piece for assisting his own pawns, or stopping the adverse pawns.

Unfortunately, many regard the critic as an enemy, instead of seeing him as a guide to the truth.

No great player blundered oftener than I done. I was champion of the world for twenty-eight years because I was twenty years ahead of my time. I played on certain principles, which neither Zukertort nor anyone else of his time understood. The players of today, such as Lasker, Tarrasch, Pillsbury, Schlechter and others have adopted my principles, and as is only natural, they have improved upon what I began, and that is the whole secret of the matter.

Chess is intellectual gymnastics.