quotations about chess
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. We know that his play is always fair, just, and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance.
THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
A Liberal Education
Grandmaster games are said to begin with novelty, which is the first move of the game that exits the book. It could be the fifth, it could be the thirty-fifth. We think about a chess game as beginning with move one and ending with checkmate. But this is not the case. The game begins when it gets out of book, and it ends when it goes into book.
BRIAN CHRISTIAN
The Most Human Human
The hardest thing in chess is to win a won game.
MAX EUWE
From My Games, 1920-1937
It's hard to understand why people who have enough time to play chess want to spend it playing chess.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
Chess is all about getting the king into check, you see. It's about killing the father. I would say that chess has more to do with the art of murder than it does with the art of war.
ARTURO PEREZ-REVERTE
The Flanders Panel
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
The Irrational Knot
Chess is as much a mystery as women.
CECIL J. S. PURDY
Chess Review, 1950
I had lunch with a chess champion the other day. I knew he was a chess champion because it took him twenty minutes to pass the salt.
ERIC SYKES
attributed, Dim Wit: The Stupidest Quotes of All Time
During a chess competition, a chessmaster should be a combination of a beast of prey and a monk.
ALEXANDER ALEKHINE
attributed, Chess Analytics: Training with a Grandmaster
The blunders are all there on the board, waiting to be made.
SAVIELLY TARTAKOWER
Chess Digest Magazine, 1975
Now we appreciate that what affords us so much enjoyment in chess is really the same thing for all of us, be it for the layman who sees nothing finer in chess than the sacrificial combination or be it for the expert who marvels at the far-reaching scheme of a game. It is the triumph of the intellect and genius over the lack of imagination; the triumph of personality over materialism.
RICHARD RETI
Modern Ideas in Chess
Chess may be the deepest, least exhaustible of pastimes, but it is nothing more. As for a chess genius, he is a human being who focuses vast, little-understood mental gifts and labors on an ultimately trivial human enterprise.
GEORGE STEINER
Fields of Force
What is a weak pawn? A pawn that is exposed to attack and also difficult to defend is a weak pawn. There are several varieties: isolated, doubled, too advanced, retarded.
SAMUEL RESHEVSKY
Art of Positional Play
I often feel that chess is like a form of mental boxing, not only because the contenders tend to feel battered and bruised after the contest (in the case of chess it's more mental and emotional than physical) but also because you can play a great game for six or seven hours, and after those many hours of mental and emotional investment, lose your concentration for a vital moment and get knocked out at the end!
DANIEL GORMALLY
Calculate Like a Grandmaster: Learn from the World-Class Attacking Players
Only he, who penetrates into the depth of the game, can express his personality in it.
VLADIMIR KRAMNIK
Music and Chess: Apollo Meets Caissa
You know I'm finished with the old chess because it's all just a lot of book and memorization you know.
BOBBY FISCHER
radio interview, January 27, 2002
One bad move nullifies forty good ones.
ISRAEL ALBERT HOROWITZ
All About Chess
There are more adventures on a chessboard than on all the seas of the world.
PIERRE MACORLAN
attributed, Essential Chess Quotations
In the game of chess we see illustrated the game of life and its vicissitudes--success and failure.
OPOIX
attributed, Day's Collacon
Those persons who make light of the wooden puppets that run over the surface of the chess board should recollect that a frame of wires strung with wooden balls was the familiar companion of the earliest mathematicians, that the science of logarithms was perfected by means of wooden pegs and a board pierced with holes, and that Napoleon won his victories before his battles were fought, by sticking his map of Europe full of pins surmounted by divers colored balls of sealing-wax.
FRANKLIN K. YOUNG & EDWIN C. HOWELL
The Minor Tactics of Chess: A Treatise on the Deployment of the Forces in Obedience to Strategic Principle