Portal:Chess/Quotes
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- The game of chess is not merely an idle amusement; several very valuable qualities of the mind are to be acquired and strengthened by it, so as to become habits ready on all occasions; for life is a kind of chess. — American philosopher, scientist, and author Benjamin Franklin
- The point is that chess doesn’t have a strict criterion of correctness. Chess is a multiform game! — Danish Grandmaster Bent Larsen
- Place the contents of the chess box in a hat, shake them up vigorously, pour them on the board from a height of two feet, and you get the style of Steinitz. — English chess theorist and author Henry Bird, on the unique attacking style and emphasis on pawn structure and space, as against on traditional chess strategies, of American (né Austrian) world champion Wilhelm Steinitz
- The chess pieces are the block alphabet which shapes thoughts; and these thoughts, although making a visual design on the chessboard, express their beauty abstractly like a poem...I have come to the personal conclusion that, while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists. — French surrealist artist Marcel Duchamp, on the other-than-mathematical quality of chess
- He has a profound liking for ugly opening moves. — German chess master and theorist Siegbert Tarrasch, on Danish chess master Aron Nimzowitsch and his favoring of hypermodern chess openings, especially those involving the fianchettoing of bishops, as explicated in his Mein System
- After we have paid our dutiful respects to such frigid virtues as calculation, foresight, self-control and the like, we always come back to the thought that speculative attack is the lifeblood of chess. — American author Fred Reinfeld, on the value of players' essaying gambits and sacrifices
- I regard the current time control as ideal, and I believe it should remain unaffected. We play good serious chess and besides we have rapid chess and blitz tournaments. More activities should be organized of the latter type as they provide a great show for spectators. However, tournaments with classical time control should form the backbone, in order to prevent a decline in the level of performance. FIDE intends to make chess a shabby and elementary sport...Chess will never be more popular than either soccer or tennis, because this game is too complex. In order to enjoy it, a spectator should know some rudiments of the sport. In chess, this level is quite high...Mass spectators will always seek after simpler and more spectacular sports. — Russian Grandmaster and world chess champion Vladimir Kramnik, on the preferring by the chess governing authority of quicker chess games, in part in view of a desire to expand Internet and television viewership of tournaments
