I started playing chess when I was about 4 or 5 years old. It is very good for children to learn to play chess, because it helps them to develop their mental abilities. It also helps to consolidate a person's character, because as it happens both in life and in a chess game we have to make decisions constantly. In chess there is no luck and no excuses: everything is in your hands.
Interpretation
Chess enhances children's mental abilities and character by teaching decision-making skills.
Vladimir Kramnik emphasizes the significance of learning chess at a young age, arguing that it supports the development of critical mental skills and character. He notes that both chess and life require constant decision-making, and since chess operates without luck or excuses, it encourages players to take responsibility for their choices, thereby shaping their character.
In practice
During a speech at a youth camp, I shared this quote to encourage children to engage in activities that develop their thinking skills.
Part of my preparation for the World Champion match against Kasparov was to be ready for his off-board tactics. I did not to react to them at all. Once you start thinking about these things during the game, even analysing them, you're caught.
I believe every chess player senses beauty, when he succeeds in creating situations, which contradict the expectations and the rules, and he succeeds in mastering this situation.
I don't know whether computers are improving the style of play, I know they are changing it. Chess has become a different game, one could say that computers have changed the world of chess. That is pretty clear.
Even if you play perfectly, a fault of your opponent's can destroy the entire beauty of the game.
When I speak of the beauty of a game of chess, then naturally this is subjective. Beauty can be found in a very technical, mathematical game for example. That is the beauty of clarity.
The development of beauty in chess never depends on you alone. No matter how much imagination and creativity you invest, you still do not create beauty. Your opponent must react at the same highest level.
Time passed solely in the pursuit of pleasure leaves no solid enjoyment for the future; but from the hours you spend in reading and studying useful books, you will gather a golden harvest in future years.
I started my own Pies Descalzos/Barefoot Foundation when I was 18. We provide education to vulnerable children in Colombia and other developing countries. I am an avid believer that education - and especially early childhood development - is the key to breaking the cycle of poverty.
There are many more want-to-be writers out there than good editors.
Notice how many of the Olympic athletes effusively thanked their mothers for their success? “She drove me to my practice at four in the morning,” etc. Writing is not figure skating or skiing. Your mother will not make you a writer. My advice to any young person who wants to write is: leave home.
I didn't go to school a full year until I was 11 or 12, so I lived in books. I really was an observer of life.
There is no real education that does not respond to felt need; anything else acquired is trifling display.
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