quotations about chess
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
In the opening a master should play like a book, in the middle game he should play like a magician, in the ending he should play like a machine.
IRVING CHERNEV
The Bright Side of Chess
Chess is war over the board. The object is to crush the opponent's mind.
BOBBY FISCHER
One cannot play chess if one becomes aware of the pieces as living souls and of the fact that the Whites and the Blacks have more in common with each other than with the players.
ANATOL RAPOPORT
Strategy and Conscience
Only he, who penetrates into the depth of the game, can express his personality in it.
VLADIMIR KRAMNIK
Music and Chess: Apollo Meets Caissa
The hardest thing in chess is to win a won game.
MAX EUWE
From My Games, 1920-1937
Chess is not a standard for measuring the abilities of your acquaintances--nor an epitome of all the sciences--nor a panacea for all human ills--nor a subject for daily toil and nightly meditation. It is simply a recreation, and only to be used and regarded as such. The less selfish you are in its pursuit--the clearer head--the more patience--the better temper you bring to the practice of it, the better will you illustrate the merits of chess as the most intellectual of games, and establish your own character as a philosopher even in sport.
HOWARD STAUNTON
"The Chess-Player's Handbook,", Littell's Living Age, Aug. 18, 1849
Chess is not a science -- at least, not exclusively a science. The proportion as we see it is roughly one quarter science, one quarter art, and all the rest -- battle.
MAX EUWE & H. KRAMER
The Middlegame
A great chessplayer is not a great man, for he leaves the world as he found it.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Table Talk