Quotes on Chess Game

All this twaddle, the existence of God, atheism, determinism, liberation, societies, death, etc., are pieces of a chess game called language, and they are amusing only if one does not preoccupy oneself with 'winning or losing this game of chess.

Every time you take a step, even when you don't want to. . . . When it hurts, when it means you rub chins with death, or even if it means dying, that's good. Anything that moves ahead, wins. No chess game was ever won by the player who sat for a lifetime thinking over his next move.

Of course, errors are not good for a chess game, but errors are unavoidable and in any case, a game without ant errors, or as they say 'flawless game' is colorless.

The Advantage is that mathematics is a field in which one's blunders tend to show very clearly and can be corrected or erased with a stroke of the pencil. It is a field which has often been compared with chess, but differs from the latter in that it is only one's best moments that count and not one's worst. A single inattention may lose a chess game, whereas a single successful approach to a problem, among many which have been relegated to the wastebasket, will make a mathematician's reputation.

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.

I give 98 percent of my mental energy to Chess Others give only 2 percent

You have to have the fighting spirit. You have to force moves and take chances

My opponents make good moves too. Sometimes I don't take these things into consideration

Here and there in the ancient literature we encounter legends of wise and mysterious games that were conceived and played by scholars, monks, or the courtiers of cultured princes. These might take the form of chess games in which the pieces and squares had secret meanings in addition to their usual functions.

I claim that nothing else is so effective in encouraging the growth of chess strength as such independent analysis, both of the games of the great players and your own.

When I asked Fischer why he had not played a certain move in our game, he replied: 'Well, you laughed when I wrote it down!'

All that matters on the Chessboard is good moves.

Your body has to be in top condition. Your Chess deteriorates as your body does. You can't separate body from mind

Chess is so inspiring that I do not believe a good player is capable of haviong an evil thought during the game.

You may learn much more from a game you lose than from a game you win. You will have to lose hundreds of games before becoming a good player.

In order to improve your game you must study the endgame before everything else; for, whereas the endings can be studied and mastered by themselves, the middlegame and the opening must be studied in relation to the endgame.

In life, unlike chess, the game continues after checkmate.

The chess-board is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us.

[Chess] is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something very clever, when they are only wasting their time.