“Chess is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something very clever when they are only wasting their time” — George Bernard Shaw –
“Chess is mental torture” — Kasparov (Chess Champion) –
“Chess is the gymnasium of the mind” — Paaascal –
Chess is the art of analysis.
-Mikhail Botvinnik
“Creating an undesired stalemate is the height of stupidity” — Anonymous –
“If your opponent offers you a draw, try to work out why he thinks he’s worse off” — Unknown –
“Of chess it has been said that life is not long enough for it, but that is the fault of life, not chess” – Irving Chernev
“One bad move nullifies forty good ones” — Horowitz –
“The chess-board is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the Universe the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature The player on the other side is hidden from us” — Thomas Huxley
“The essence of chess is thinking about what chess is” — David Bronstein –
“The first principle of attack–Don’t let the opponent develop” — Anonymous
“The older I grow, the more I value Pawns” — Keres – chess quotes
The world is not likely to tire of an amusement which never
repeats itself, of a game which today presents features as
novel and charms as fresh as those with which it delighted,
in the morning of history, the dwellers on the banks of the
Ganges and Indus.
“Winning isn’t everything… but losing is nothing” — Unknown
“You can’t play chess if you’re groggy from pills” — Kasparov –
1)Chess is a sea in which a gnat may drink and an elephant
may bathe.
-Hindu proverb
2)Chess is no whit inferior to the violin, and we have a
large number of professional violinists.
-Mikhail Botvinnik
3)Chess is a part of culture and if a culture is declining
then chess too will decline.
-Mikhail Botvinnik, 1978
4)Think not of defense as drudgery one is forced to suffer
through from time to time in lieu of an offense; think of
defense as offense in close quarters.
-Bruce A. Moon
6)Could we look into the head of a chess player, we should
see there a whole world of feelings, images, ideas, emotion
and passion. -Alfred Binet
7)Methodical thinking is of more use in chess than
inspiration.
-C. J. S. Purdy
8)A win by an unsound combination, however showy, fills me
with artistic horror.
-Wilhelm Steinitz
9)Place the contents of the chess box in a hat, shake them up
vigorously, pour them on the board from a height of two
feet — and you get the style of Steinitz.
-H. E. Bird
10)Don’t get hung up on static formations. In chess, all
things are fluid, because mobility is everything.
Formations are only valid as part of a sequence or plan,
not as goals.
-Bruce A. Moon
11)Short of actual blunders, lack of faith in one’s position
is the chief cause of defeat. To be sure, it is easy to
recommend faith and not so easy to practice it.
-Fred Reinfeld
12)Many have become chess masters — no one has become the
master of chess.
-Siegbert Tarrasch
13)Mason had the unique quality of competently simmering
through six aching hours, and scintillating in the seventh.
Others resembled him, but forgot to scintillate.
-William Ewart Napier
14)The Pawn move is a capital investment. Every one of the
forty-eight should, from the beginning, be spent as if it
were one of the last forty-eight apprehensive and
responsible dollars between yourself and starvation.
-William Ewart Napier
15)Chess…is a forcing house where the fruits of character
can ripen more fully than in life.
-Edward Morgan Foster
17)Botvinnik tried to take the mystery out of chess, always
relating it to situations in ordinary life. He used to call
chess a typical inexact problem similar to those which
people are always having to solve in everyday life.
-Gary Kasparov, 1987
18)”When in doubt…”
…move a Pawn. -Gene Ramage
…develop. -Anon.
…take more time. -John Zimmerman
…offer a draw. -William H. Nulf
…resign. -Bruce A. Moon
…find a new hobby. -Mark Pasternak
…attack! -Anon.
…retreat! -Anon.
…play any old move and
blame it on Nimzovich! -Bruce A. Moon
…exchange. -John Zimmerman
…seek a lost position. -Bruce A. Moon
19)There is not the mystery in ten murders that there is in
one game of chess.
-Detective Linley
(in “Two Bottles of Relish”)
20)
-Willard Fiske
21)He who has imagination without learning, has wings and no
feet.
-Joubert
Read about Chess History in India