If the opponent offers keen play I don't object; but in such cases I get less satisfaction, even if I win, than from a game conducted according to all the rules of strategy with its ruthless logic.

I didn't picture myself as even a grandmaster, to say nothing of aspiring to the chess crown. This was not because I was timid - I wasn't - but because I simply lived in one world, and the grandmasters existed in a completely different one. People like that were not really even people, but like gods or mythical heroes.

Pawns not only create the sketch for the whole painting, they are also the soil, the foundation, of any position

Chess is everything: art, science, and sport.

The ideal in chess can only be a collective image, but in my opinion it is Capablanca who most closely approaches this.