Chess Quotes

In my games I have sometimes found a combination intuitively simply feeling that it must be there. Yet I was not able to translate my thought processes into normal human language.

Snooker is just chess with balls.

In life, unlike chess, the game continues after checkmate.

I don't believe in psychology. I believe in good moves

There are two types of sacrifices: correct ones and mine

Just as one's imagination is stirred by a girl's smile, so is one's imagination stirred by the possibilities of chess.

Later, I began to succeed in decisive games. Perhaps because I realized a very simple truth: not only was I worried, but also my opponent

I love chess, and I didn't invent Fischerandom chess to destroy chess. I invented Fischerandom chess to keep chess going. Because I consider the old chess is dying, it really is dead. A lot of people have come up with other rules of chess-type games, with 10x8 boards, new pieces, and all kinds of things. I'm really not interested in that. I want to keep the old chess flavor. I want to keep the old chess game. But just making a change so the starting positions are mixed, so it's not degenerated down to memorisation and prearrangement like it is today.

In order to improve your game you must study the endgame before everything else; for, whereas the endings can be studied and mastered by themselves, the middlegame and the opening must be studied in relation to the endgame.

Botvinnik's right! When he says such things, then he's right. Usually, I prefer not to study chess but to play it. For me chess is more an art than a science. It's been said that Alekhine and I played similar chess, except that he studied more. Yes, perhaps, but I have to say that he played, too.

The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman. The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life.

Chess is war over the board. The object is to crush the opponents mind.

When I asked Fischer why he had not played a certain move in our game, he replied: 'Well, you laughed when I wrote it down!'

Fischer is Fischer, but a knight is a knight!

Help your pieces so they can help you

All I want to do, ever, is play chess.

We are in truth but pieces on this chess board of life, which in the end we leave, only to drop one by one into the grave of nothingness.

Fischer is the greatest genius to descend from the chess heavens.

Without technique it is impossible to reach the top in chess, and therefore we all try to borrow from Capablanca his wonderful, subtle technique.

Many Chess players were surprised when after the game, Fischer quietly explained: 'I had already analyzed this possibility' in a position which I thought was not possible to foresee from the opening

In order to improve your game you must study the endgame before everything else.

Some sacrifices are sound; the rest are mine

Between rounds of speed chess I read enough of a programming manual to teach myself to write programs on the school's DEC mainframe in the language Basic.

None of the great players has been so incomprehensible to the majority of amateurs and even masters, as Emanuel Lasker.

I give 98 percent of my mental energy to Chess Others give only 2 percent