Quotes on Chess

Chess is a unique battlefield for human minds and computers - human intuition, our creativity, fantasy, our logic, versus the brute force of calculation and a very small portion of accumulated knowledge infused by other human beings. So in chess we can compare these two incompatible things and probably make projections into our future. Is there danger that the human mind will be overshadowed by the power of computers, or we can still survive?

To play for a draw (at any rate with White) is to some degree a crime against chess.

Botvinnik's right! When he says such things, then he's right. Usually, I prefer not to study chess but to play it. For me chess is more an art than a science. It's been said that Alekhine and I played similar chess, except that he studied more. Yes, perhaps, but I have to say that he played, too.

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

Suddenly it was obvious to me in my analysis I had missed what_x000D_ Fischer had found with the greatest of ease at the board

I don't like to dwell on the past. I'm interested in Fischerandom now, I am working on a new clock, I'm trying to make chess a more exciting game today. I am not interested in sitting in my rocking chair thinking what I did 10, 20 or 30 years ago.

In mathematics, if I find a new approach to a problem, another mathematician might claim that he has a better, more elegant solution. In chess, if anybody claims he is better than I, I can checkmate him.

Education in Chess has to be an education in independent thinking and judging. Chess must not be memorized.

Who's straight? I'm not. I am bent gouged pinched and tugged at, and squeezed into this funny shape. Each life is a game of chess that went to hell on the seventh move, and now the flukey play is cramped and slow, a dream of constraint and cross-purpose, with each move forced, all pieces pinned and skewered and zugzwanged... But here and there we see these figures who appear to run on the true lines, and they are terrible examples. They're rich, usually.

If you don't know what to play, play nothing.

If you don't win, it's not a great tragedy - the worst that happens is that you lose a game.

The ability to work hard for days on end without losing focus is a talent. The ability to keep absorbing new information after many hours of study is a talent.

Enormous self-belief, intuition, the ability to take a risk at a critical moment and go in for a very dangerous play with counter-chances for the opponent - it is precisely these qualities that distinguish great players.

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!'

By playing at Chess then, we may learn: First: Foresight... Second: Circumspection... Third: Caution...And lastly, we learn by Chess the habit of not being discouraged by present bad appearances in the state of our affairs, the habit of hoping for a favorable chance, and that of persevering in the secrets of resources

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

You must take your opponent into a deep dark forest where 2+2=5, and the path leading out is only wide enough for one

On the chessboard, lies and hypocrisy do not survive long

While all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists.

Chess books should be used as we use glasses: to assist the sight, although some players make use of them as if they thought they conferred sight

All that matters on the Chessboard is good moves.