Emanuel Lasker Quotes
-
You should keep in mind no names, nor numbers, nor isolated incidents, not even results, but only methods..The method produces numerous results; a few of these will remain in our memory, and as long as they remain few, they are useful to illustrate and to keep alive the rules which order a thousand results.
-
On the chessboard, lies and hypocrisy do not survive long.
-
In Chess, as it is played by masters, chance is practically eliminated.
-
On the chessboard, lies and hypocrisy do not survive long. The creative combination lays bare the presumption of a lie; the merciless fact, culminating in the checkmate, contradicts the hypocrite.
-
He who has a slight disadvantage plays more attentively, inventively and more boldly than his antagonist who either takes it easy or aspires after too much. Thus a slight disadvantage is very frequently seen to convert into a good, solid advantage.
-
To refer to the oft mooted question, "Which piece is stronger, the Bishop or the Knight?" it is clear that the value of the Bishop undergoes greater changes than that of the Knight.
-
An advantage could consist not only in a single important advantage but also in a multitude of insignificant advantages.
-
Show me three variations in the leading handbook on the openings, and I will show you two of those three that are defective.
-
The combination player thinks forward; he starts from the given position, and tries the forceful moves in his mind.
-
The process of making pieces in Chess do something useful (whatever it may be) has received a special name: it is called the attack. The attack is that process by means of which you remove obstructions.
-
Show me three lines of the opening theory moves and I will prove to you that two of them are incorrect.
-
The attack is that process by means of which you remove obstructions.
-
On a motif such as was indicated by Reti one cannot build the plan of a whole well contested game; it is too meagre, too thin, too puny for such an end. Reti's explanations, wherever they are concerned with an analysis which covers a few moves, are correct and praiseworthy. But when he abandons the foundations of analysis in order to draw too bold, too general a conclusion, his arguments prove to be mistaken.
-
I have known many chess players, but among them there has been only one genius - Capablanca!
-
The laws of chess do not permit a free choice: you have to move whether you like it or not.
-
Chess is neither a science nor an art. It is what human nature most delights in--a fight.
-
Having spent 200 hours on the above, the young player, even if he possesses no special talent for chess, is likely to be among those two or three thousand chessplayers who play on a par with a master. There are, however, a quarter of a million chessplayers who annually spend no fewer than 200 hours on chess without making any progress. Without going into any further calculations, I can assert with a high degree of certainty that nowadays we achieve only a fraction of what we are capable of achieving.
-
Vanity should never tempt a player to engage in a combat at the risk of loss of health. It is bad enough to lose without the additional annoyance of paying doctors' bills.
-
Chess is, above all, a fight.
-
The delight in gambits is a sign of chess youth... In very much the same way as the young man, on reaching his manhood years, lays aside the Indian stories and stories of adventure, and turns to the psychological novel, we with maturing experience leave off gambit playing and become interested in the less vivacious but withal more forceful manoeuvres of the position player.
-
... in itself the title of world champion does not give any significicant advantages, if it is not acknowledged by the entire chess world, and a champion who does not have the chess world behind him is, in my view, a laughing-stock.
-
By some ardent enthusiasts Chess has been elevated into a science or an art. It is neither; but its principal characteristic seems to be - what human nature mostly delights in - a fight.
-
The game gives us a satisfaction that Life denies us. And for the Chess player, the success which crowns his work, the great dispeller of sorrows, is named 'combination'.
-
Of my fifty-seven years I have applied at least thirty to forgetting most of what I have learned or read. Since then, I have acquired a certain ease and cheer which I should never again like to be without. I have stored little in my memory, but I can apply that little, and it is of use in many and varied emergencies. I keep it in order, but resist every attempt to increase its dead weight.