Chess Quotes

• It is rightly said that the most difficult thing in chess is winning a won position

  

  Vladimir Kramnik
  • Success
  • Winning
  • Difficult

• Chess is a game of understanding and not of memory.

  

  Eugene Znosko-Borovsky
  • Game
  • Memory
  • Chess

• If you don't have an end game of something delightful, you're just moving chess pieces around.

  

  William McDonough
  • Moving
  • Games
  • Ends

• Computers have proved to be formidable chess players. In fact, they've beaten our top human chess champions.

  

  Neil deGrasse Tyson
  • Chess

• I felt that chess... is a science in the form of a game... I consider myself a scientist. I wanted to be treated like a scientist.

  

  Bobby Fischer
  • Game
  • Science
  • Chess

• Stereotyped as convention-going, pocket-protector-wearing, chess-playing, infrequently-showering types, nerds are one of our society's most ridiculed groups. And, for a university with an international reputation as a bastion of intellectualism, Harvard is startlingly devoid of them.

  

  Alexandra Petri
  • Society
  • Chess

• If they think you're a hero, they're wrong. After you die, you don't get to be Beowulf or Perseus or Rama any more. Whole different set of rules. Chess, not checkers. Go, not chess. You understand?

  

  Neil Gaiman
  • Different
  • Die
  • Hero

• Spying is a like a game of chess: Sometimes you have to withdraw, sometimes you have to sacrifice one of your pieces to win - preferably a knight rather than a king or queen.

  

  John Rhys-Davies
  • Game
  • King
  • Sacrifice

• Every month I look through some ten thousand games, so not as to miss any new ideas and trends.

  

  Vladimir Kramnik
  • Study
  • Missing
  • Games

• The game of chess is the most fascinating and intellectual pastime which the wisdom of antiquity has bequeathed to us.

  

  Howard Staunton
  • Wisdom
  • Chess
  • Antiquity

• Chess is the gymnasium of the mind.

  

  Blaise Pascal
  • Mind
  • Chess
  • Gymnasium

• If you have a strong opponent, a competition is stimulating. I am generally most open to ideas when I have had a bad result. In chess, too, players specialise. This specialty then becomes an entry barrier.

  

  Viswanathan Anand
  • Strong
  • Player
  • Competition

• Chess is like body-building. If you train every day, you stay in top shape. It is the same with your brain - chess is a matter of daily training.

  

  Vladimir Kramnik
  • Brain
  • Training
  • Train

• It is impossible to win gracefully at chess. No man has yet said "Mate!" in a voice which failed to sound to his opponent bitter, boastful and malicious.

  

  A. A. Milne
  • Men
  • Winning
  • Games

• Chess is a very positive way to exercise your mind. It makes you look at the whole picture...what are your options and what is the best thing to do? In football, you are mostly reacting from a defensive point of view...but you always want to be counterattacking...a similarity with chess strategy. Chess and offensive football are quite similar; you sacrifice something now to get something back later.

  

  Barney Chavous
  • Picture
  • Strategy
  • Point Of View

• ... 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.

  

  Emanuel Lasker
  • Champion
  • Advantages
  • Acknowledged

• Christian ... he felt very much like an uninitiated chess-player who sees that the pieces are in a peculiar position on the board, and might open the way for him to give checkmate, if he only knew how.

  

  George Eliot
  • Christian
  • Player
  • Chess

• If possible, be Russian. And live in another country. Play chess. Be an active trader between languages. Carry precious metals from one to the other. Remind us of Stravinsky. Know the names of plants and flying creatures. Hunt gauzy wings with snares of gauze. Make science pay tribute. Have a butterfly known by your name.

  

  Vladimir Nabokov
  • Life
  • Country
  • Flying

• Unless a player has an 'understanding chess' rating of at least 2400, the amount of significant knowledge that he can impart on others is limited.

  

  Edmar Mednis
  • Understanding
  • Player
  • Coaches

• Well, I kind of split my life into two pieces. One was where my chess career lies. There, I kept my sanity, so to speak, and my logic. And the other was my religious life. I tried to apply what I learned in the church to my chess career too. But I still was studying chess. I wasn't just 'trusting in God' to give me the moves.

  

  Bobby Fischer
  • Life
  • God
  • Career

• Confidence is very important - even pretending to be confident. If you make a mistake but do not let your opponent see what you are thinking then he may overlook the mistake.

  

  Viswanathan Anand
  • Thinking
  • Important
  • Mistake

• My job is to play chess, the game that I love. I achieve what I can in chess. That is what I focus on. Basically, I am always focused on playing the game, and this is important to me.

  

  Viswanathan Anand
  • Important
  • Focus
  • Achieve

• The chess player who develops the ability to play two dozen boards at a time will benefit from learning to compress his or her analysis into less time.

  

  Marilyn vos Savant
  • Time
  • Learning
  • Player

• 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.

  

  Emanuel Lasker
  • Achieve
  • Master
  • Possesses

1

...

11

12

13

14

15

...

18

previous

next