Quotes on Chess

The winning of a pawn among good players of even strength often means the winning of the game.

Endings of one rook and pawns are about the most common sort of endings arising on the chess board. Yet though they do occur so often, few have mastered them thoroughly. They are often of a very difficult nature, and sometimes while apparently very simple they are in reality extremely intricate.

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.

When you don't know what to do, get still. The answer will come.

Some people think that if their opponent plays a beautiful game, it's OK to lose. I don't. You have to be merciless.

Play the game for more than you can afford to lose... only then will you learn the game.

We may hope that machines will eventually compete with men in all purely intellectual fields. But which are the best ones to start with? Many people think that a very abstract activity, like the playing of chess, would be best. It can also be maintained that it is best to provide the machine with the best sense organs that money can buy, and then teach it to understand and speak English.

It's true that in chess as in politics, fund-raising and glad-handing matter.

You know, comrade Pachman, I don't enjoy being a Minister, I would rather play chess like you, or make a revolution in Venezuela.

You sit at the board and suddenly your heart leaps. Your hand trembles to pick up the piece and move it. But what chess teaches you is that you must sit there calmly and think about whether it's really a good idea and whether there are other, better ideas.

In chess one cannot control everything. Sometimes a game takes an unexpected turn, in which beauty begins to emerge. Both players are always instrumental in this.

It's quite difficult for me to imagine my life without chess.

In chess, as a purely intellectual game, where randomness is excluded, - for someone to play against himself is absurd ... It is as paradoxical, as attempting to jump over his own shadow.

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

And the good writer chooses his words for their 'meaning', but that meaning is not a a set, cut-off thing like the move of knight or pawn on a chess-board. It comes up with roots, with associations, with how and where the word is familiarly used, or where it has been used brilliantly or memorably.

But man is a fickle and disreputable creature and perhaps, like a chess-player, is interested in the process of attaining his goal rather than the goal itself.

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.

We are a thick skinned people with emtpy souls. We spend our days playing dice, chess, or sleeping - and we say we are the best people that ever came to mankind?

I would certainly end up forever crying the blues into a coffee cup in a park for old men playing chess or silly games of some sort.