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

I've met enough KGB colonels in my life.

If you wish to succeed, you must brave the risk of failure.

A grandmaster needs to retain thousands of games in his head, for games are to him what the words of their mother tongue are to ordinary people, or notes or scores to musicians.

It was not about losing my mental power; it's about not feeling good about my contribution to the game.

I think Russians today have a distorted picture of capitalism, liberal democracy and market economy.

Losing can persuade you to change what doesn't need to be changed, and winning can convince you everything is fine even if you are on the brink of disaster.

At the end of the day, it's all about money.

Excelling at chess has long been considered a symbol of more general intelligence. That is an incorrect assumption in my view, as pleasant as it might be.

Chess helps you to concentrate, improve your logic. It teaches you to play by the rules and take responsibility for your actions, how to problem solve in an uncertain environment.

When I was preparing for one term's work in the Botvinnik school I had to spend a lot of time on king and pawn endings. So when I came to a tricky position in my own games I knew the winning method.

The present is shaped by the past.

A new idea comes suddenly and in a rather intuitive way, but intuition is nothing but the outcome of earlier intellectual experience.

DEGRADATION, n. One of the stages of moral and social progress from private station to political preferment.

The glut of information that is spayed at us on a daily basis is an important factor in the formation of our ideologies, and it's not even actually happening in front of us.

With our financial house on fire, Obama makes clear both in in his speech and his budget that the essence of his presidency will be the transformation of health care, education and energy.

Yet still the time:- 'It's so nice to come home'.

I wasn't a child at 13, were you?

It's not a democracy here, it's the Middle East.

I'd love to go somewhere warm, somewhere near the beach and somewhere with a cool culture. It could be Hawaii, Cuba, South America - anywhere that has a cool culture and a beautiful climate.

Sooner barbarity than boredom.