CHESS QUOTES

quotations about chess

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I've always found chess to be a bit too much like real life to provide much enjoyment as a game.

CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE

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Chess is not a game for dictators for numerous reasons. One, it's transparent. It's all information hundred percent available so you know exactly what you have, you know exactly what your opponent has. You don't know what he or she is thinking, but you definitely know what kind of resources your opponent can use to hurt you, to damage your position. Also, chess is very much a strategic game so you have to think long-term. Dictators don't think long-term. Dictators, especially who are in power for so long as Putin is, they have to work on the survival mode. Because it's all about today, maybe tomorrow morning. Everything that helps us survive is good. Because the moment the dictator thinks long-term, he'll definitely miss guys from his own entourage hitting him in his own back. The game that defines dictators much better is poker because it's about bluffs. It doesn't matter whether you have a strong hand or weak hand. You can have a weak hand, but if you're comfortable bluffing, raising stakes, and if you can read your opponent.

GARRY KASPAROV

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I am more strongly confirmed than ever in the belief that the time devoted to chess is literally frittered away. It is, to be sure, a most exhilarating sport, but it is only a sport; and it is not to be wondered at that such as have been passionately addicted to the charming pastime should one day ask themselves whether sober reason does not advise its utter dereliction.

PAUL MORPHY

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Kindness of heart is little use in chess.

SEBASTIAN-ROCH NICOLAS DE CHAMFORT

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Age brings wisdom to some men, and to others chess.

EVAN ESAR

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Usually, in my experience, people become violently attached to chess for a few years and then give it up. But with many, chess is like a delicious drug which offers such heavenly delights that they can never tear themselves away from it completely.

REUBEN FINE

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A chess game in progress is ... a cosmos unto itself, fully insulated from an infant's cry, an erotic invitation, or war.

DAVID SHENK

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I'm not much of a chess player, but there is an aspect of the game that I find fascinating. After a while, you can almost see lines of force between the pieces. Areas of danger where it is physically impossible to move pieces into. Clouds of possibility, forbidden zones.

HANNU RAJANIEMI

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I sing the form of war, the bloodless plain,
Armies of ivory, and a mock campaign;
How two bold kings in different armour veil'd,
One black, one white, for conquest fought the field.

MARCO GIROLAMO VIDA

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Chess is in its essence a game, in its form an art, and in its execution a science.

BARON TASSILO VON HEYDEBRAND UND DER LASA

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After the game the King and pawn go into the same box.

ITALIAN PROVERB

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The game of chess. Supposedly men made it up, and it's about war and men and the ravages and the bravery and the genius of commanding and moving pieces and ... No. It's marriage. The Queen moves anywhere she wants.

BILL COSBY

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For in the idea of chess and the development of the chess mind we have a picture of the intellectual struggle of mankind.

RICHARD RETI

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Play the opening like a book, the middlegame like a magician, and the endgame like a machine.

RUDOLPH SPIELMANN

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The chess pieces are the block alphabet which shapes thoughts; and these thoughts, although making a visual design on the chess-board, express their beauty abstractly, like a poem.... I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists.

MARCEL DUCHAMP

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

ISAAC ASIMOV

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Chess is a fairy tale of 1001 blunders.

SAVIELLY TARTAKOVER

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I am convinced, the way one plays chess always reflects the player's personality. If something defines his character, then it will also define his way of playing.

VLADIMIR KRAMNIK

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The Game of Chess is not merely an idle amusement; several very valuable qualities of the mind, useful in the course of human life, are to be acquired and strengthened by it, so as to become habits ready on all occasions; for life is a kind of Chess, in which we have often points to gain, and competitors or adversaries to contend with, and in which there is a vast variety of good and ill events, that are, in some degree, the effect of prudence, or the want of it. By playing at Chess then, we may learn: 1st, Foresight, which looks a little into futurity, and considers the consequences that may attend an action ... 2nd, Circumspection, which surveys the whole Chess-board, or scene of action: - the relation of the several Pieces, and their situations; ... 3rd, Caution, not to make our moves too hastily.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

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

BOBBY FISCHER

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