Chess Quotes

Methodical thinking is of more use in Chess than inspiration

The middlegame I repeat is chess itself, chess with all its possibilities, its attacks, defences, sacrifices, etc.

Don't worry about your rating, work on your playing strength and your rating will follow.

How dreadful...to be caught up in a game and have no idea of the rules.

Life is not always like chess. Just because you have the king surrounded, don't think he is not capable of hurting you.

The pupil wants not so much to learn, as to learn how to learn.

I consider chess an art, and accept all those responsibilities which art places upon its devotees.

A lifetime in not enough to learn everything about chess.

Place the contents of the Chess box in a hat, shake them up vigorously, pour them on the board from a height of two feet, and you get the style of Steinitz

Be a harsh critic of your own wins.

Playing chess has many aspects that can be useful in everyday situations like planning, concentration and combinations. You learn to win but also to lose and to be creative.

Chess is a natural cerebral high.

What would Chess be without silly mistakes?

Chess is a meritocracy.

Chess is a game sufficiently rich in meaning that it is easily capable of containing elements of both tragedy and comedy.

Nothing excites jaded Grandmasters more than a theoretical novelty

Young players calculate everything, a requirement of their relative inexperience.

Chess cannot be taught. Chess can only be learned.

When you play Bobby, it is not a question if you win or lose. It is a question if you survive.

To improve at chess you should in the first instance study the endgame.

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

By all means examine the games of the great chess players, but don't swallow them whole. Their games are valuable not for their separate moves, but for their vision of chess, their way of thinking.

Psychologically, you have to have confidence in yourself and this confidence should be based on fact.

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

In chess, as in life, opportunity strikes but once.

Chess is a miniature version of life. To be successful, you need to be disciplined, assess resources, consider responsible choices and adjust when circumstances change.

Chess is the art of analysis.

Often, in the Ruy Lopez, one must be patient, wait and carry on a lengthy and wearisome struggle.

A passed pawn increase in strength as the number of pieces on the board diminishes.

He who fears an isolated Queen's Pawn should give up Chess.

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

Playing for complications is an extreme measure that a player should adopt only when he cannot find a clear and logical plan.

Bobby Fischer is the greatest Chess genius of all time!

First restrain, next blockade, lastly destroy.

Chess is something more than a game. It is an intellectual diversion which has certain artistic qualities and many scientific elements.

Chess demands total concentration

Chess is a part of culture and if a culture is declining then Chess too will decline

I like to make them squirm.

Every great master will find it useful to have his own theory on the openings, which only he himself knows, a theory which is closely linked with plans for the middle game.

I have known many chess players, but among them there has been only one genius - Capablanca!

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

Many men, many styles; what is chess style but the intangible expression of the will to win.

Chess is thirty to forty percent psychology. You don't have this when you play a computer. I can't confuse it

Seize the outpost K5 with your knight, and you can go to sleep. Checkmate will come by itself.

I attend to my fitness. I go the gym every day and try to maintain my physical fitness; without that, it is tough to take challenges on the chess board.

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

I still hope to kill Fischer

I think it's almost definite that the game is a draw theoretically.

Chess, like other arts, must be practiced to be appreciated.

Maybe if I didn't have the talent in chess I'd find the talent in something else. The only thing I know is that I have talent in chess, and I'm satisfied with that.