Chess Quotes

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 Fischer's hands, a slight theoretical advantage is as good a being a Queen ahead

Chess is a great game. No matter how good one is, there is always somebody better. No matter how bad one is, there is always somebody worse.

Geniuses of certain kinds - mathematicians, chess players, computer programmers - seem, if not mad, at least lacking in the social skills most easily identified with sanity.

There was mass hysteria in the Chess Recording Studio when I did the "Shapes of Things" solo ... they weren't expecting it, and it was just some weird mist coming from the East out of an amp.

I love chess, but it's the height of decadence.

Fischer, who may or may not be mad as a hatter, has every right to be horrified

Baseball and cricket are beautiful and highly stylized medieval war substitutes, chess made flesh, a mixture of proud chivalry and base-in both senses-greed.

Chess is a cure for headaches.

No other great master has been so misunderstood by the vast majority of chess amateurs and even by many masters, as has Emanuel Lasker.

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

In chess it is more important to frustrate your opponent's strategy than to be obsessed with your own.

If the media didn't know I played chess, there'd be no angle on me at all.

I hate anyone who beats me.

The chess player who develops the ability to play two dozen boards at a time will benefit from learning to compress his or her analysis into less time.

Training in analysis (like any other form of chess training) should be treated very seriously.

Look at Garry Kasparov. After he loses, invariably he wins the next game. He just kills the next guy. That's something that we have to learn to be able to do

Chess is no whit inferior to the violin, and we have a large number of professional violinists

Chess isn't football or hockey.

An innovation need not be especially ingenious, but it must be well worked out.

Nature supplies the game of chess with its implements; science with its system; art with its aesthetic arrangement of its problems; and God endows it with its blessed power of making people happy.

Chess was Capablanca's mother tongue.

No one has ever played these endgames with such elegant ease as Capablanca.

What do I do when we're not taping? Sit in a dark room and refine my plans for someday ruling Earth from a blimp. And chess.

Chess, like love, is infectious at any age.

Is Bobby Fischer quite sane?

One of these modest little moves may be more embarrassing to your opponent than the biggest threat

I have always a slight feeling of pity for the man who has no knowledge of chess, just as I would pity the man who has remained ignorant of love.

Real chessplayers think about chess more or less 24 hours a day. It is a passion and a fate that one has to live with - and it lasts a lifetime.

Making a movie is like a chess game. It's about constantly changing patterns, adapting to new things. It's not just black and white, as you know.

My fascination for studies proved highly beneficial, it assisted the development of my aesthetic understanding of chess, and improved my endgame play.

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.

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

Human affairs are like a chess game. Only those who do not take it seriously can be called good players.

Whereas a novice makes moves until he gets checkmated (proof), a Grand Master realizes 20 moves in advance that it’s futile to continue playing (conceptualizing).

Women, by their nature, are not exceptional chess players: they are not great fighters.

My problem with chess was that all my pieces wanted to end the game as soon as possible.

For me, Chess is life and every game is like a new life. Every chess player gets to live many lives in one lifetime.

The tactician knows what to do when there is something to do; whereas the strategian knows what to do when there is nothing to do

Life's too short for chess.

Bobby Fischer was hugely important for the American chess community because it put chess on the map - he made it possible for other chess players to make a living.

I think that by and large chess players have been very kind. Like I said there have been a few incidents, but they certainly didn't serve to bring me down any.

For us chess players the language of artist is something natural.

Do you realize Fischer almost never has any bad pieces? He exchanges them, and the bad pieces remain with his opponents

Chess holds its master in its own bonds, shackling the mind and brain so that the inner freedom of the very strongest must suffer.

Never play for the win, never play for the draw, just play chess!

Time trouble is blunder time.

Why do you have to use me to show off? If you want to show off, then why don't you learn to play chess." - Ch. 5

My studies with Botvinnik brought me immense benefit, particularly the homework assignments which forced me to refer to chess books and to work independently.

I have found after 1.d4 there are more opportunities for richer play.