Chess teaches you to control the initial excitement you feel when you see something that looks good and it trains you to think objectively when you're in trouble
Interpretation
Chess helps you learn to manage your emotions and think clearly under pressure.
This quote by Stanley Kubrick emphasizes the importance of emotional control and objective thinking, skills that are cultivated through the game of chess. Just as players must restrain their initial impulses to appreciate a promising move, they also learn to analyze situations rationally, especially in challenging circumstances, thus gaining valuable life lessons that extend beyond the chessboard.
In practice
During a presentation on strategic thinking, one could reference this quote to highlight the importance of controlling emotions.
The reality of the final moment, just before shooting [the scene], is so powerful that all previous analysis must yield before the impressions you receive under these circumstances, and unless you use this feedback to your positive advantage, unless you adjust to it, adapt to it and accept the sometimes terrifying weaknesses it can expose, you can never realize the most out of your film.
Because I direct films, I have to live in a major English-speaking production center. That narrows it down to three places: Los Angeles, New York and London. I like New York, but it's inferior to London as a production center. Hollywood is best, but I don't like living there.
I've never achieved spectacular success with a film. My reputation has grown slowly. I suppose you could say that I'm a successful filmmaker-in that a number of people speak well of me. But none of my films have received unanimously positive reviews, and none have done blockbuster business.
A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what's behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.
The great nations have always acted like gangsters, and the small nations like prostitutes.
Anyone who has ever been privileged to direct a film also knows that, although it can be like trying to write 'War and Peace' in a bumper car in an amusement park, when you finally get it right, there are not many joys in life that can equal the feeling.
Upon the progress of knowledge the whole progress of the human race is immediately dependent: he who retards that, hinders this also.
In pain there is as much wisdom as in pleasure: like the latter it is one of the best self preservatives of a species.
The purpose of today's training is to defeat yesterday's understanding.
The more relaxed the muscles are, the more energy can flow through the body. Using muscular tensions to try to 'do' the punch or attempting to use brute force to knock someone over will only work to opposite effect.
A man is like a bit of Labrador spar, which has no lustre as you turn it in your hand until you come to a particular angle; then it shows deep and beautiful colors. There is no adaptation or universal applicability in men, but each has his special Talent, and the mastery of Successful men consists in adroitly keeping themselves where and when that turn shall be oftenest to be practiced.
We work so hard to get somewhere, to realize a dream, to arrive at some destination, that we often forget that though some satisfaction may be waiting at the end of our endurance and effort, there is great and irreplaceable aliveness in the steps along the way.
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