Some of my favorite chess quotes
“Even the laziest King flees wildly in the face of a double check!"(Aaron Nimzowitsch)
“Many have become Chess Masters,
no one has become the Master of Chess”
(Siegbert Tarrasch)
a magician, and the endgame like a machine”
(Spielmann)
“Who is your opponent tonight,
tonight I am playing against the Black pieces”
(Akiba Rubinstein)
“Every Chess master was once a beginner”
(Chernev)
“The hardest game to win is a won game”
(Emanuel Lasker)
“The most powerful weapon in Chess is to have the next move”
(David Bronstein)
“Help your pieces so they can help you”
(Paul Morphy)
“In a gambit you give up a Pawn for the sake of getting a lost game”
(Samuel Standige Boden)
“A bad plan is better than none at all”
(Frank Marshall)
“Chess books should be used as we use glasses: to assist
the sight, although some players make use of them as if
they thought they conferred sight”
(Jose Raul Capablanca)
“A Chess game is divided into three stages: the first, when you hope
you have the advantage, the second when you believe you have an
advantage, and the third... when you know you're going to lose!”
(Savielly Tartakower)
“Not all artists are Chess players, but all Chess players are artists”
(Marcel Duchamp)
“On the chessboard, lies and hypocrisy do not survive long”
(Emanuel Lasker)
“The passed Pawn is a criminal, who should be kept under lock and key. Mild measures, such as police surveillance, are not sufficient”
(Aaron Nimzovich)
“Chess holds its master in its own bonds, shackling the mind and brain
so that the inner freedom of the very strongest must suffer”
(Albert Einstein)
“For surely of all the drugs in the world, Chess must be
the most permanently pleasurable”
(Assiac)
“There must have been a time when men were demigods,
or they could not have invented Chess”
(Gustav Schenk)
“Chess is a terrible game. If you have no center, your opponent
has a freer position. If you do have a center, then you
really have something to worry about!”
(Siegbert Tarrasch)
“I am still a victim of Chess. It has all the beauty of art and much
more. It cannot be commercialized. Chess is much
purer than art in its social position”
(Marcel Duchamp)
“No Chess Grandmaster is normal; they only
differ in the extent of their madness”
(Viktor Korchnoi)
“If Chess is a science, it's a most inexact one. If Chess is an art, it is too
exacting to be seen as one. If Chess is a sport, it's too esoteric. If Chess
is a game, it's too demanding to be just a game. If Chess is a mistress,
she's a demanding one. If Chess is a passion, it's a rewarding
one. If Chess is life, it's a sad one”
(Unknown)
“You must take your opponent into a deep dark forest where 2+2=5,
and the path leading out is only wide enough for one”
(Mikhail Tal)
“Man is a frivolous, a specious creature, and like a Chess player, cares
more for the process of attaining his goal than for the goal itself”
(Dostojewski)
“Mistrust is the most necessary characteristic of the Chess player”
(Siegbert Tarrasch)
“When you are lonely, when you feel yourself an alien in the world, play Chess. This will raise your spirits and be your counselor in war”
(Aristotle)
“I played Chess with him and would have beaten him sometimes only he
always took back his last move, and ran the game out differently”
(Mark Twain)
“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”
(Jose Raul Capablanca)
“A man that will take back a move at Chess will pick a pocket”
(Richard Fenton)
“The isolated Pawn casts gloom over the entire chessboard”
(Aaron Nimzovich)
“Chess, like any creative activity, can exist only through
the combined efforts of those who have creative talent, and
those who have the ability to organize their creative work”
(Mikhail Botvinnik)
“I have never in my life played the French Defence,
which is the dullest of all openings”
(Wilhelm Steinitz)
“The older I grow, the more I value Pawns”
(Keres)
“The enormous mental resilience, without which no Chess player
can exist, was so much taken up by Chess that he could
never free his mind of this game”
(Albert Einstein)
“I won't play with you anymore. You have insulted my friend”
--when an opponent cursed himself for a blunder
(Miguel Najdorf)
“Checkers is for tramps”
(Paul Morphy)
“The King is a fighting piece. Use it!”
(Wilhelm Steinitz)
“I have always a slight feeling of pity for the man who
has no knowledge of Chess”
(Siegbert Tarrasch)
“He who takes the Queen's Knight's Pawn will sleep in the streets”
(Anonymous)
“I'm not a materialistic person, in that, I don't suffer the lack or loss of money. The absence of worldly goods I don't look back on. For Chess is a way I
can be as materialistic as I want without having to sell my soul”
(Jamie Walter Adams)
