Portal:Chess/Quotes archive

[edit] July 24 to August 22, 2006

Chess is not dominoes. — Russian Grandmaster and former world champion Garry Kasparov, on the unsound quality of the Grob's Attack, an irregular chess opening in which the player with the white pieces begins the game by moving his king's knight's pawn two squares (1 g4)
Chess is a cure for headaches. — British economist John Maynard Keynes
If chess is an art, Alekhine. If chess is a science, Capablanca. If chess is a struggle, Lasker. — French (né Polish) Grandmaster Savielly Tartakower, enumerating former world champions Russian Alexander Alekhine (pictured), Cuban José Raúl Capablanca, and German Emanuel Lasker in reply to a query as to whom Tartakower thought to be the best-ever player
When one plays with Morphy the sensation is as queer as the first electric shock, or first love, or chloroform, or any entirely novel experience. — English chess theorist and author Henry Bird, on the unique combinative skill of American chess master Paul Morphy
Chess is thirty to forty percent psychology. You don't have this when you play a computer. I can't confuse it. — Hungarian Grandmaster and world's top-ranked player Judit Polgár, on the problems encountered in playing leading chess computers

We all view ourselves as Botvinnik's pupils, and further generations will learn by his games. — Soviet Grandmaster Tigran Petrosian, on countrymate Mikhail Botvinnik, whom Petrosian defeated to win the world championship and who would later instruct world champion Russian Grandmasters Anatoly Karpov, Garry Kasparov, and Vladimir Kramnik
In chess, at least, the brave inherit the earth. — Latvian Grandmaster Edmar Mednis, on the propensity of countrymate world champion Grandmaster Mikhail Tal to essay bold sacrifices
Chess is a game of understanding, not memory. — Russian chess master and author Eugene Znosko-Borovsky, lamenting the frequency with which games were decided in view of a player's memorizing opening lines

In blitz, the knight is stronger than the bishop. – Czech Grandmaster Vlastimil Hort
Chess problems demand from the composer the same virtues that characterize all worthwhile art: originality, invention, conciseness, harmony, complexity, and splendid insincerity. – Russian author Vladimir Nabokov
In chess, as it is played by masters, chance is practically eliminated. – German world champion Emanuel Lasker
The passion for playing chess is one of the most unaccountable in the world. It slaps the theory of natural selection in the face. It is the most absorbing of occupations. The least satisfying of desires. A nameless excrescence upon life. It annhilates a man. You have, let us say, a promising politician, a rising artist [whom] you wish to destroy. Dagger or bomb are archaic and unreliable but teach him, inoculate him with chess. – British author H.G. Wells
Only the player with the initiative has the right to attack. – Austrian world champion Wilhelm Steinitz
Excellence at chess is one mark of a scheming mind. – British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Chess was Capablanca's mother tongue. – Austrian-Hungarian hypermodernist theoretician Richard Réti, on Cuban world champion José Raúl Capablanca, whose eight-year unbeaten streak Réti ended in 1925

"Chess is eminently and emphatically the philosopher's game." — Paul Morphy
"Chess is the touchstone of intellect." — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"Nowadays, if you're not a grandmaster at 14, you can forget it." — Viswanathan Anand
"During a chess competition, a chess master should be a combination of a beast of prey and a monk." — Alexander Alekhine

"Chess is in its essence a game, in its form an art, and in its execution a science." — Tassilo von Heydebrand und der Lasa
"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." — Thomas Huxley
"Chess is mental torture." — Garry Kasparov

"Of chess it has been said that life is not long enough for it, but that is the fault of life, not chess." — Irving Chernev
"I'd rather have a pawn than a finger." — Reuben Fine
- "It all depends: which pawn and which finger?" — Roman Dzindzichashvili