Best piece of chess wisdom that made you a better player

Andy Soltis captured 250+ pearls of chess wisdom in his recent book but I couldn't find a few of my own favorite advice quotes buried in there.

So I thought it would be useful if I'd start the ball rolling by asking the hive to let us know what compact piece of chess advice (single sentence  please! ) seemed to make the biggest difference to them during their growth? Please provide sources :)

My personal favorite is

"Take his Queen, Mate him later!"  - IM Donald Byrne

Take your time; play longer games, never move on impulse.

"Stop hanging your queen"

"I like the moment when I break a man's ego." - Bobby Fischer.

"If you don't win, you're a looser." - benedictus

A little more seriously: Find your opponent's best move before you play your move.

A friend told me a few days ago:

"When you have found a good move; stop and look for a better one."

He told me who originally said this, but I don't remember the name.

Skip

Breathe.

Only look for simple moves that dont give up material.

Have a plan. Don't just make a move for the sake of making a move. If it becomes obvious that your plan isn't going to work, make a different plan. Even a simple plan is better than no plan because at least your opponent will have to defend against your plan, making it difficult to plan against you.

Learned it from Silman, but don't have a direct quote. It helped my game immensely.

haha thats funny

"Everyone has  a plan, until they' get hit."   -- Mike T'yson

best piece of chess wisdom ,iam trying to work on (kind of hard to follow!)

"Find the best move within the alloted time."

"Tactics are 99% of Chess."

"A job worth doing, is worth doing right."

Don't grab!

"A patzer sees a check, gives a check". There is no glory to checking for the sake of checking. If you are easily driven away, you've just lost a valuable tempo.

See a good move; look for a better move.

"Just play, don't waste your time gossiping on forums"

:0

Checks. Captures. Attacks.

Admittedly, it took me a long time to realize I should look for my opponent's as well. :)

"if you play a guy you don't know,look at his rating later",this makes me more condifent

i mean,its hard to play well when you see your oppenents rating is 600 above yours,i did this and i won a FM!(i didn't know that during the game).i was 1360 and he was 2000something!

next round i played a GM and i lost...

i played a GM and i only had a 1360 rating!

and only 10!

thats amazing(thank you)

Best advice. Ever.