Bobby Fischer Quotes - Page 3

I hope the Icelandic government grants me political asylum.

Chess demands total concentration

I don't remember one thing I learned in school.

I'm not as soft or as generous a person as I would be if the world hadn't changed me.

That's what Chess is all about. One day you give your opponent a lesson, the next day he gives you one

It's the fault of the chess players themselves. I don't know what they used to be, but now they're not the most gentlemanly group. When it was a game played by the aristocrats it had more like you know dignity to it. When they used to have the clubs, like no women were allowed and everybody went in dressed in a suit, a tie, like gentlemen, you know. Now, kids come running in their sneakers. Even in the best chess club-and they got women in there. It's a social place and people are making noise, it's a madhouse.

All that matters on the Chessboard is good moves.

I don't listen to weakies.

To get squares you have to give up squares.

If you don't win, it's not a great tragedy - the worst that happens is that you lose a game.

She and I just don't see eye to eye together. She's a square. She keeps telling me that I'm too interested in chess, that I should get friends outside of chess, you can't make a living from chess, that I should finish high school and all that nonsense. She keeps in my hair and I don't like people in my hair, you know, so I had to get rid of her.

When I used to go to the Manhattan Chess Club back in the fifties, I met a lot of old-timers there who knew Capablanca, because he used to come around to the Manhattan club in the forties - before he died in the early forties. They spoke about Capablanca with awe. I have never seen people speak about any chess player like that, before or since.

Its just you and your opponent at the board and you're trying to prove something

Vacations are designed to refresh the outlook of everyone. No matter how tired they may be when they return to work, vacationers have been refreshed emotionally and intellectually. Their effectiveness in their job has probably improved, and they are, generally speaking, better employees for the time off.

I play honestly and I play to win. If I lose, I take my medicine.

Morphy was probably the greatest genius of them all

I really love the dark of the night. It helps me to concentrate.

In chess so much depends on opening theory, so the champions before the last century did not know as much as I do and other players do about opening theory. So if you just brought them back from the dead they wouldn't do well. They'd get bad openings.

Patzer sees a check, gives a check.

He is the so-called father of the modern school of chess; before him, the King was considered a weak piece and players set out to attack the King directly. Steinitz claimed that the King was well able to take care of itself, and ought not to be attacked until one had some other positional advantage. He understood more about the use of squares than Morphy and contributed a great deal more to chess theory.

The white people should go back to Europe, and the country should be returned to the American Indians. This is the future I would like to see for the so-called United States.

Concentrate on material gains. Whatever your opponent gives you take, unless you see a good reason not to.

I think it's almost definite that the game is a draw theoretically.

As Olafsson showed me, White can win... It's hard to believe. I stayed up all night analysing, finally convicing myself, and, incidentally, learning a lot about Rook and Pawn endings in the process.

Computers are our only opponents that don't always have no excuse when losing against me.