Quotes about chess
page 2

“Someone finally understood all the “hell” that I’d been through since a child when I’d first tried to understand language. And yet in other forms of communications, like painting, sculpture, music, math, problem-solving, and chess, I’d been very good. In fact, in high school, once I learned how to play chess, I’d play lightning-fast, intuitively seeing all these different possibilities at the same time, and I’d won well over a hundred chess games without losing a single game. And that included beating some of our faculty members who thought that they were very good at chess.”

Victor Villaseñor (1940) American writer

Burro Genius: A Memoir (2004)

School, Music, Game, Communication

“In tournaments it is not enough to be a connoisseur of chess; one must also play well.”

Siegbert Tarrasch (1862–1934) German chess player, chess writer, and chess theoretician

As quoted in "The Bright Side of Chess" (1952) by Irving Chernev, p. 107

“Universality is the distinguishing mark of genius. There is no such thing as a special genius, a genius for mathematics, or for music, or even for chess, but only a universal genius. … The theory of special genius, according to which for instance, it is supposed that a musical genius should be a fool at other subjects, confuses genius with talent. … There are many kinds of talent, but only one kind of genius, and that is able to choose any kind of talent and master it.”

Otto Weininger book Sex and Character

Source: Sex and Character (1903), p. 112.

Fools, Music, Mathematics, Universe

“Game theory applies to a very different type of conflict, now technically called a game. The well-known games such as poker, chess, ticktacktoe and so forth are games in the strict technical Bark and counterbark sense. But what makes parlor games games is not their entertainment value or detachment from real life.”

Anatol Rapoport (1911–2007) Russian-born American mathematical psychologist

Source: 1960s, "The Use and Misuse of Game Theory," 1962, p. 108

Life, Game, Sense

“The art is French, but the ideas may have come from anywhere, like the game of chess which the pilgrims or crusaders brought home from Syria. In the oriental game, the King was followed step by step by a Minister whose functions were personal. The crusaders freed the piece from control; gave it liberty to move up or down or diagonally, forwards and backwards; made it the most arbitrary and formidable champion on the board, while the King and the Knight were the most restricted in movement; and this piece they named Queen and called the Virgin.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

An early French name for the chesspiece known as the Queen was Fierge or Vierge, meaning "Virgin".
Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)

Art, Home, Game, Idea

“When I started out, Indians did not have much interest in chess…Now India seems to spawn new chess academies every day.”

Viswanathan Anand (1969) Indian chess player

page=292
Reimagining India: Unlocking the Potential of Asia’s Next Superpower

“I'm not Machiavellian. I don't play chess with my life, you know. I respond in the moment, which is what makes me a good actor. It makes me, sometimes, a good interview subject but it also makes me a very easy target.”

Russell Crowe (1964) New Zealand-born Australian actor, film producer and musician

60 Minutes interview (2006)

Life

“If they think you're a hero, they're wrong. After you die, you don't get to be Beowulf or Perseus or Rama any more. Whole different set of rules. Chess, not checkers. Go, not chess. You understand?”

Neil Gaiman book Fragile Things

From the Monarch in the Glenn
Fragile Things (2006)

Understanding, Thinking

“We need clear rules to play the game. We need to have respect for the law. If you play a chess game but after two or three moves you can change the rules, how can people play with you? Of course you will win, but after 60 years you will still be a bad player because you never meet anyone who can challenge you. What kind of game is that? Is that interesting? This game is not right, but who is going to say, 'Hey, let’s play fairly?”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

2010-, Ai Weiwei: The Dissident, 2011

People, Law, Game, Change

“Chess is a game by its form, an art by its content and a science by the difficulty of gaining mastery in it. Chess can convey as much happiness as a good book or work of music can.”

Tigran Petrosian (1929–1984) Soviet Georgian Armenian chess player and chess writer

Attributed without citation in "Tigran Petrosian's Best Games" http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chesscollection?cid=1014968 at chessgames.com

Happiness, Books, Art, Music

“My life was in crisis. All my values were becoming meaningless. I was discovering that my chosen profession was empty, foolish, as useless as—as playing chess.”

Robert Silverberg (1935) American speculative fiction writer and editor

Short fiction, Schwartz Between the Galaxies (1974)

Life

“Visual thinking is often driven more strongly by the conceptual knowledge we use to organize our images than by the contents of the images themselves. Chess masters are known for their remarkable memory for the pieces on a chessboard. But it's not because people with photographic memories become chess masters. The masters are no better than beginners when remembering a board of randomly arranged pieces. Their memory captures meaningful relations among the pieces, such as threats and defenses, not just their distribution in space.”

Steven Pinker book How the Mind Works

Source: How the Mind Works (1997), p. 295

People, Knowledge, Thinking, Memory

“You are not the first to be shocked and horrified by chess,” he assured her. “It is a curse of the intellect. It is a game for lunatics—or else it creates them.”

Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) American writer of fantasy, horror, and science fiction

“The 64-Square Madhouse” (p. 74); originally published in If, May 1962
Short Fiction, A Pail of Air (1964)

Game

“That reminded John Paul of what Andrew had said when he was teaching him to play chess. “You have to think ahead, the next move, the next move, the next move, to see where it’s all going to lead.” John Paul understood the principle as soon as Andrew explained it. But he stopped playing chess anyway, because he didn’t care what happened to little plastic figures on a board of sixty-four squares.”

Orson Scott Card Ender's Game hexalogy

Page 53
Ender's Game series, First Meetings in the Enderverse (2003), The Polish Boy

Thinking

“The cows sit on the telegraph poles and play chess
The cockatoo under the skirts of the Spanish dancer
Sings as sadly as a headquarters bugler and the cannon lament all day…”

Richard Huelsenbeck (1892–1974) German poet

End of the World, Ende der Welt', 1919

Singing

“I achieved more than I could dream of in chess and in chess composing.”

Yochanan Afek (1952) Israeli chess player, composer, trainer and arbiter

From an interview with Tibor Károlyi, Genius in the Background (2009), p. 59.

Dreams

“I love the play between the conscious and unconscious minds in the creative moment, and for me chess and the martial arts are both about developing a rich working relationship with your intuition.”

Josh Waitzkin (1976) Chess player

Onthemat interview

Love, Art

“Omni: Will robots be complex enough to be friends of people?
Shannon: I think so. I myself could very easily imagine that happening. I see no limit to the capabilities of machines. As microchips get smaller and faster, I can see them getting better than we are. I can visualize a time in the future when we will be to robots as dogs are to humans.
[…]
Omni: Do you find it depressing that chess computers are getting so strong?
Shannon: I am not depressed by it. I am rooting for the machines! I have always been on the machines' side. Ha-ha!”

Claude Elwood Shannon (1916–2001) American mathematician and information theorist

Omni Magazine (1987) https://archive.org/details/omni-magazine-1987-08. (sometimes quoted as "I visualize a time when we will be to robots what dogs are to humans. And I am rooting for the machines.")

People, Dogs, Imagination, Thinking

“These children…well, they have no concept. None. All they want to do is win. That is your culture. America spoils chess, as it spoils all things. Art? What art? Winning, all you Americans can think of is winning. Winning and getting rich. Your country is too young to have so much power. Too immature. Yet, because of your power, everybody pays attention. Everybody. You are teaching the world that only one thing matters!”

Stephen L. Carter book The Emperor of Ocean Park

Karl, Ch. 26, Sam Loyd's Challenge
The Emperor of Ocean Park (2002)

Children, World, Art, Thinking

“In our small chess community in Marylebone it would be mock modesty on my part to deny that I have built up for myself a considerable name without ever actually having won a single game. Even the best players are sometimes beaten, and that is precisely what happens to me.”

Stephen Potter (1900–1969) British writer

The Theory and Practice of Gamesmanship (1947) p. 92

Game, Communication, Parting

“The type of rationality we assume in economics — perfect, logical, deductive rationality — is extremely useful in generating solutions to theoretical problems. But it demands much of human behavior — much more in fact than it can usually deliver. If we were to imagine the vast collection of decision problems economic agents might conceivably deal with as a sea or an ocean, with the easier problems on top and more complicated ones at increasing depth, then deductive rationality would describe human behavior accurately only within a few feet of the surface. For example, the game Tic-Tac-Toe is simple, and we can readily find a perfectly rational, minimax solution to it. But we do not find rational “solutions” at the depth of Checkers; and certainly not at the still modest depths of Chess and Go.”

W. Brian Arthur (1946) American economist

Source: Inductive Reasoning and Bounded Rationality (The El Farol Problem) (1994), p. 1

Behavior, Imagination, Game, Problem

“.. Yes, indeed, what have we been up to? I feel rather like I've retired to the country, in some remote province, for that's what my life is like in N. Y. I see few people and people don’t try to see me anymore as they know they bore me. I write to the Arensberg's once a year and they do the same. There is a general weariness which, I think, is not confined to our generation. To tell the truth, most people prefer war to peace... Well, there you are, my dear Yvonne. Nothing as usual. Chess as much as possible: at least chess players don’t talk”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

Quote from his letter to Yvonne Chastel, New York, 8 January 1949; as cited in The Duchamp Book, ed. Gavin Parkinson, Tate Publishing, London 2008 p. 159
1921 - 1950

Life, War, People, Truth

“Having spent a lifetime analyzing the game of chess and comparing the capacity of computers to the capacity of the human brain, I've often wondered, where does our success come from? The answer is synthesis, the ability to combine creativity and calculation, art and science, into a whole that is much greater than the sum of its parts. Chess is a unique cognitive nexus, a place where art and science come together in the human mind, and are then refined and improved by experience.”

Garry Kasparov (1963) former chess world champion

Opening Gambit, Why Chess?, p. 4
2000s, How Life Imitates Chess (2007)

Art, Game, Science, Success

“I study chess eight hours a day, on principle.”

Alexander Alekhine (1892–1946) Russian / French chess player, chess writer, and chess theoretician

Attributed in: David Hooper, ‎Kenneth Whyld (1996) The Oxford companion to chess. p. 8.

Study

“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. Suddenly one loses all interest in who will be champion.”

Anatol Rapoport (1911–2007) Russian-born American mathematical psychologist

Anatol Rapoport, Strategy and Conscience. Harper & Row, 1964. p. 195
1960s

Soul

“Russia is playing chess, while we are playing Monopoly. The only question is whether they will checkmate us before we bankrupt them.”

Jeane Kirkpatrick (1926–2006) American diplomat and Presidential advisor

Speech given during the 1988 Barrick Lecture Series at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Question

“Tax Law is like the world's biggest chess game with all sorts of weird conundrums about ethics and civics and consent of the governed built in. For me, it's a bit like math. I have no talent for it but find it still erotically interesting.”

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist

Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace (2012)

World, Law, Game

“The bewildered novice in chess moves cautiously, recalling individual rules, whereas the experienced player absorbs a complicated situation at a glance and is unable to account rationally for his intuition. In like manner mathematical intuition grows with experience, and it is possible to develop a natural feeling for concepts such as four dimensional space.”

William Feller (1906–1970) Croatian-American mathematician

Introduction, The Nature of Probability Theory, p. 2.
An Introduction To Probability Theory And Its Applications (Third Edition)

Feeling, Mathematics, Nature

“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 (1929–2020) American writer

Fields of Force (1974)

“Most chess books only sell a few thousand copies, and a book titled something like “Women in Chess” would sell even fewer. The idea with this title was to spread the book outside the competitive chess world. I’m interested in attracting readers who love chess but play only casually, and feminists interested in male dominated fields.”

Jennifer Shahade (1980) chess player

On the title of her book Chess Bitch : Women in the Ultimate Intellectual Sport
Gothamist interview (2006)

Love, Women, Books, World

“I'm a chess player; I play chess.”

Floyd Mayweather Jr. (1977) American boxer

2010s, 2015, Interview with Jim Gray (September 2015)

“It [chess] is eminently and emphatically the philosopher's game.”

Paul Morphy (1837–1884) American chess player

As quoted in Testimonials to Paul Morphy: Presented at University Hall, New York, May 25, 1859

Game

“Had it merely called to our attention the existence and exact nature of certain fundamental gaps in economic theory, the Theory of Economic Behavior by von Neumann and Morgenstern would have been a book of outstanding importance. But it does more than that. It is essentially constructive: where existing theory is considered to be inadequate, the authors put in its place a highly novel analytical apparatus designed to cope with the problem.
It would be doing the authors an injustice to say that theirs is a contribution to economics only. The scope of the book is much broader. The techniques applied by the authors in tackling economic problems are of sufficient generality to be valid in political science, sociology, or even military strategy. The applicability to games proper (chess and poker) is obvious from the title. Moreover, the book is of considerable interest from a purely mathematical point of view.”

Leonid Hurwicz (1917–2008) Russian-American economist and mathematician

Leonid Hurwicz. "The Theory of Economic Behavior," The American Economic Review, Vol. 35, No. 5 (Dec., 1945), pp. 909: Lead paragraphs of the article

Books, Behavior, Game, Mathematics

“Some consider that when I play I am excessively cautious, but it seems to me that the question may be a different one. I try to avoid chance. Those who rely on chance should play cards or roulette. Chess is something quite different.”

Tigran Petrosian (1929–1984) Soviet Georgian Armenian chess player and chess writer

Attributed without citation in "Tigran Petrosian's Best Games" http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chesscollection?cid=1014968 at chessgames.com

Question, Chance

“Machine-held strings of binary digits can simulate a great many kinds of things, of which numbers are just one kind. For example, they can simulate automobiles on a freeway, chess pieces, electrons in a box, musical notes, Russian words, patterns on a paper, human cells, colors, electrical circuits, and so on. To think of a computer as made up essentially of numbers is simply a carryover from the successful use of mathematical analysis in studying models. Most of this series of lectures has been devoted to applications of computers, and this is not the time to give details about their usefulness. I merely wish to point out certain types of things being done with computers today that could not have been done in 1945. Some of these are technological, some are intellectual.”

George Forsythe (1917–1972) Stanford University computer scientist

As cited in: Zenon Pylyshyn (1970) Perspectives on the computer revolution. p. 379
"Educational implications of the computer revolution," 1963

Music, Color, Mathematics, Thinking

“A friendship across sectarian lines is not a common phenomenon, in his experience. In the past, it has struck him that, apart from homosexuals, only chess players have found a reliable way to bridge, intensely but without fatal violence, the gulf that separates any given pair of men.”

Michael Chabon (1963) Novelist, short story writer, essayist

Source: The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (2007), Chapter 10

Men, Friendship, Way, Past

“We must finish once and for all with the neutrality of chess. We must condemn once and for all the formula "chess for the sake of chess", like the formula "art for art's sake". We must organize shockbrigades of chess-players, and begin immediate realization of a Five-Year Plan for chess.”

Nikolai Krylenko (1885–1938) Russian revolutionary, politician and chess organiser

Krylenko on promoting chess in the Soviet Union. Quoted in Robert Conquest, The Great Terror: A Reassessment

Art

“In the last three months I hadn’t lost one single game of chess. It was crazyloco, but sometimes I thought that I was so brilliant because I could see what other people couldn’t see or understand even after I’d explain it to them. Playing chess wasn’t about making single moves. It was about seeing patterns, then backing up inside your mind and seeing the last five and six moves of your opponent, then flashing forward real fast. And bingo, the whole chessboard became alive in living patterns.”

Victor Villaseñor (1940) American writer

Crazy Loco Love: A Memoir (2008)

People, Game, Understanding

“Caissa, the goddess of chess, had punished me for my conservative play, for betraying my nature.”

Garry Kasparov (1963) former chess world champion

Part III, Chapter 15, Crisis Point, p. 188
2000s, How Life Imitates Chess (2007)

Nature

“They [Richter always works on a number of his abstract paintings at the same time] feed off one another… At the beginning, I feel totally free, and it's fun, like being a child. The paintings can look good for a day or an hour. Over time, they change. In the end, you become like a chess player. It takes me longer than some people to recognize their quality, their situation - to realize when they are finished. Finally, one day I enter the room and say, 'Checkmate.' Then sometimes I need a break, a quiet job, like a landscape. But I always need to paint abstracts again. I need that pleasure.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

after 2000, Gerhard Richter: An Artist Beyond Isms' (2002)

People, Pleasure, Feeling, Change

“I see myself more as an ambassador of the game. And I hope to bring chess to a higher level in the United States. Making bigger tournaments, more interesting events. Making it a respectable profession for young people to be able to pursue in the future.”

Maurice Ashley (1966) Chess Grandmaster

Chessville - Interviews - 20 Questions with GM Maurice Ashley http://www.chessville.com/editorials/Interviews/20Questions/Ashley.htm

People, Hope, Game, Future

“There's so many lessons I get from chess, it's incredible, but I think the biggest thing for me has always been is that losing is learning.”

Maurice Ashley (1966) Chess Grandmaster

Chessville - Interviews - 20 Questions with GM Maurice Ashley http://www.chessville.com/editorials/Interviews/20Questions/Ashley.htm

Thinking, Learning

““Do you play chess, by the by?” asked Vance.
“Used to. But no more. A beautiful game, though—if it wasn't for the players.””

S. S. Van Dine book The Bishop Murder Case

Ch 11
The Bishop Murder Case (1929)

Beauty, Game

“Film-making encompasses everything, from tricking people into investing in it, to putting on the show, to trying to distill down to moments in time, and ape reality but send this other message. It's got everything. When I was a kid I loved to draw, and I loved my electric football sets, and I painted little things and made sculptures and did matte painting and comic books and illustrated stuff, and took pictures, had a darkroom, loved to tape-record stuff. It's all of that. It's not having to grow up. It's four-dimensional chess, it's strategy, and it's being painfully honest, and unbelievably deceitful, and everything in between.”

David Fincher (1962) American film director

Gavin Smith goes one-on-one with David Fincher (1999)

Love, People, Books, Reality

“Chess is the Drosophila of artificial intelligence.”

Alexander Kronrod (1921–1986) Russian mathematician

Attributed to Kronrod in: Ronald Chrisley, ‎Sander Begeer (2000). Artificial Intelligence: Critical Concepts. p. 520

Intelligence

“It would be three-dimensional chess with a million billion squares and a million pieces, and with the rules changing ever move.”

Clifford D. Simak book Time and Again

Source: Time and Again (1951), Chapter XXV (p. 135)

Change

“I collected 599 pictures of Elizabeth Taylor — some people find that obsessive. I collected 599. Not 600, but 599. I feel that genius and obsession be the same thing. It is rare when a woman is driven by obsession. Similarly, it is rare when a woman is a genius. That's why I said one of my most notorious sentences, that there is no woman Mozart because there is no woman Jack the Ripper. Men are more prone to obsession because they are fleeing domination by women. They flee to a chess game or to a computer or to fixing a car, or whatever, to attempt to complete their identities, because they always feel incomplete.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Playboy interview (May 1995)

Women, Men, People, Cars

“Chess first of all teaches you to be objective.”

Alexander Alekhine (1892–1946) Russian / French chess player, chess writer, and chess theoretician

Quoted in: M. Yudovich, ‎A. Kotov (2001) The Soviet School of Chess, p. 42.

“[C]hess 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 (1963) former chess world champion

2010s, Interview with Bill Kristol (2016)

Guy, Game, Thinking, Strong

“Chess is a form of intellectual productiveness, therein lies, its peculiar charm. Intellectual productiveness is one of the greatest joys -if not the greatest one- of human existence. It is not everyone who can write a play, or build a bridge, or even make a good joke. But in chess everyone can, everyone must, be intellectually productive and so can share in this select delight. I have always a slight feeling of pity for the man who has no knowledge of chess, just as I would pity for the man who has no knowledge of love. Chess, like love, like music, has the power to make men happy.”

Siegbert Tarrasch book The Game of Chess

The Game of Chess (As quoted by Fred Reinfeld in Tarrasch's Best Games of Chess)

Love, Men, Happiness, Music

“In a riddle whose answer is chess, what is the only prohibited word?”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

The Garden of Forking Paths (1942), The Garden of Forking Paths

“I was almost annoyed hearing that Putin plays chess and Obama or other leaders of the free world they play checkers. I thought I had to defend the integrity of my game because 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.”

Garry Kasparov (1963) former chess world champion

2010s, Interview with Bill Kristol (2016)

World, Game, Thinking, Hurt

“Put two players against each other who both have perfect technique, who both avoid weaknesses, and what is left?—a sorry caricature of chess.”

Emanuel Lasker (1868–1941) German World Chess Champion and grandmaster, contract bridge player, mathematician, and philosopher

Others
Source: [Andrew Soltis, Soltis, Andy, The Great Chess Tournaments and Their Stories, 133, New York 1927 • The End of Chess?, 1975, Chilton Book Company, 0-8019-6138-6]

Perfection

“After the passage of a century, Morphy still remains the most glamorous figure that has ever appeared in the chess world.”

Paul Morphy (1837–1884) American chess player

Edward Lasker (in The Adventure of Chess, 2nd Edition, New York, 1959)
About

World, Appearance

““DO YOU HEAR ME?” I now screamed to the heavens, driving this information into the deepest crevices of my mind. “I, VICTOR EDMUNDO VILLASEÑOR, TAKE THIS HOLY OATH BEFORE YOU, GOD ALMIGHTY, as your son, to write my people’s story WITH ALL MY HEART AND SOUL! I’ll write! I’ll do my part with all the power and intensity that I put into wrestling, hunting, trying to castrate myself, and chess!”

Victor Villaseñor (1940) American writer

Crazy Loco Love: A Memoir (2008)

God, People, Soul, Heart

““I have no fear of war,” said Arthur Stuart. “That’s when kings get to show their mettle.”
“You’re thinking of chess,” said Margaret. “In war, everyone has their chance to bleed.””

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Heartfire (1998), Chapter 14.

War, Fear, Thinking, Chance

“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 (1837–1884) American chess player

From Morphy's letter to Daniel Fiske, February 4, 1863 https://web.archive.org/web/20150722050734/http://www.edochess.ca/batgirl/Morphy_to_Fiske_Feb4.html

Sport, Passion, Time

“Genius is a starry word; but if there ever was a chess player to whom that attribute applied, it was Paul Morphy.”

Paul Morphy (1837–1884) American chess player

Andrew Soltis (in Golombek's Encyclopedia of Chess, New York, 1977)
About

“There are three intellectual pursuits, and, so far as I am aware, only three, in which human beings have performed major feats before the age of puberty. They are music, mathematics, and chess.”

George Steiner (1929–2020) American writer

"A Death of Kings"
Extraterritorial (1971)

Age, Music, Mathematics

“Chess for me is not a game, but an art. Yes, and I take upon myself all those responsibilities which an art imposes on its adherents.”

Alexander Alekhine (1892–1946) Russian / French chess player, chess writer, and chess theoretician

Quoted in: Daniel James Brooks (2013) Poetics. Book 1, p. 72.

Art, Game

“My dream is chess played in every school in India. The Soviets would include a chessboard along with the bride’s trousseau to ensure that the children born of that marriage knew the rules of chess.”

Viswanathan Anand (1969) Indian chess player

page=295
Reimagining India: Unlocking the Potential of Asia’s Next Superpower

Marriage, Children, School, Dreams

“In chess, we say that the player with the initiative is obliged to attack, otherwise the initiative will be lost and the counterattack will likely be decisive.”

Garry Kasparov (1963) former chess world champion

2010s, The Truth About Putin (2018)

Decision

“To become a world chess champion.”

Viswanathan Anand (1969) Indian chess player

At the age of six when some one asked him as to what he wanted to become.
Reimagining India: Unlocking the Potential of Asia’s Next Superpower

World

“What do we mean by “understanding” something? We can imagine that this complicated array of moving things which constitutes “the world” is something like a great chess game being played by the gods, and we are observers of the game. We do not know what the rules of the game are; all we are allowed to do is to watch the playing. Of course, if we watch long enough, we may eventually catch on to a few of the rules. The rules of the game are what we mean by fundamental physics. Even if we knew every rule, however, we might not be able to understand why a particular move is made in the game, merely because it is too complicated and our minds are limited. If you play chess you must know that it is easy to learn all the rules, and yet it is often very hard to select the best move or to understand why a player moves as he does. So it is in nature, only much more so.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

volume I; lecture 2, "Basic Physics"; section 2-1, "Introduction"; p. 2-1
The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1964)

God, World, Imagination, Game

“Sheriff Bart: Since I am your host and you are my guest what are your hobbies? What do you like to do in your free time?
Jim "The Waco Kid": Oh you know, play chess…screw.
Sheriff Bart: Well let's play chess!”

Mel Brooks (1926) American director, writer, actor, and producer

Blazing Saddles

Time

“Education in Chess has to be an education in independent thinking and judgement. Chess must not be memorized, simply because it is not important enough… Memory is too valuable to be stocked with trifles.”

Emanuel Lasker (1868–1941) German World Chess Champion and grandmaster, contract bridge player, mathematician, and philosopher

Source: Lasker's Manual of Chess (1925), p. 337

Education, Thinking, Memory

“Hard to say whether personal immortality would be a good thing or not. Not for the masses, surely! Too many of them as it was. But a select few, like Terangi Maclaren—or was it worth the trouble? Even given boats, chess, music, the No Drama, beautiful women and beautiful spectroscopes, life could get heavy.”

Poul Anderson book The Enemy Stars

Source: The Enemy Stars (1959), Chapter 5 (p. 36)

Life, Women, Beauty, Music

“But, I was as helpless as a chess piece
when I was lifted up by someone's hand
And delivered from the corner
my enemies had got me in
But in all of my salvation
I still felt imprisoned inside that holding cell
that is myself”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground (2002)

“They say my chess games should be more interesting. I could be more interesting - and also lose.”

Tigran Petrosian (1929–1984) Soviet Georgian Armenian chess player and chess writer

Attributed without citation in "Tigran Petrosian's Best Games" http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chesscollection?cid=1014968 at chessgames.com

Game

“The fact that a computer player wins a game of chess or bridge with a human does not necessarily mean that the device is intelligent. The victory results from the fact that in the final analysis the device has been applied appropriate algorithms developed by man, e. g. using the properties of artificial neural networks. It is not the device that wins with a man, e. g. a chess player, but a man – the designer of the device. It is simply the rivalry of one intellect with another through the medium of computer science.”

Zygmunt Vetulani (1950) Polish mathematician

Tumiłowicz, Bronisław (February 2018): Zrób sobie mózg https://www.tygodnikprzeglad.pl/zrob-sobie-mozg/. Przegląd (6/2018): pp. 58–59.

Game, Intelligence, Science, Victory

“You sit at the board and suddenly your heart leaps. Your hand trembles to pick up the piece and move it. But what chess teaches you is that you must sit there calmly and think about whether it’s really a good idea and whether there are other, better ideas.”

Stanley Kubrick (1928–1999) American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and editor

Newsweek (26 May 1980)

Idea, Thinking, Heart

“Our efforts in chess attain only a hundredth of one percent of their rightful result…Our education, in all domains of endeavour, is frightfully wasteful of time and values.”

Emanuel Lasker (1868–1941) German World Chess Champion and grandmaster, contract bridge player, mathematician, and philosopher

Source: Lasker's Manual of Chess (1925), p. 337

Education, Effort, Time

“Compare the saint who, asked what he would do if he had only an hour to live, replied that he would go on with his game of chess, since it was as much worship as anything else he had ever done.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“These Are Not Psalms”, p. 124
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

Game

“It has been truly said that Morphy was at once the Caesar and the Napoleon of chess. He revolutionized chess. He brought life and dash and beauty into the game at a time when an age of dullness was about to set in and he did this at a stroke. Then he quit forever. Only two years from the beginning to the end. The negotiations for some modern matches have taken that long!”

Paul Morphy (1837–1884) American chess player

J. A. Galbreath (American Chess Bulletin, October, 1909)
About

Life, Age, Beauty, Game

“What was the secret of Morphy's invincibility? I think it was a combination of a unique natural talent and brilliant erudition. His play was the next, more mature stage in the development of chess. Morphy had a well-developed 'feeling for position', and therefore he can be confidently regarded as the 'first swallow”

Paul Morphy (1837–1884) American chess player

the prototype of the strong 20th century grandmaster."
Garry Kasparov (2003). On My Great Predecessors. Gloucester Publishers plc. Vol. 1, p. 43. ISBN 1857443306.
About

Secret, Feeling, Confidence, Nature

“I was born in the East Indies, once the cradle of poetry, philosophy and history and now their tomb. I belong to that race which composed the Mahabharata and invented chess. But this nation which made codes of it's poems and formulated politics in a game is no longer alive! It survives imprisoned in it's own country. I asked for India liberty and light; as for myself, more happy than my countrymen, i am free - civis sum.”

Francisco Luís Gomes (1829–1869) Indo-Portuguese physician, writer, historian, economist, political scientist and MP in the Portuguese parli…

Quoted by Nishitha Desai in Lusotopie 2000, p. 474

Happiness, History, Game, Light

“But in the tweeting life of our president, strategy is difficult to detect. Influencing news cycles seems to be the principal goal; achieving short-term advantage, you bet. But ultimately, it's all noise and no signal. And in the absence of preparation and a well-considered strategy- especially when one is moving global chess pieces- volatile unpredictability is not a virtue. We have quite enough volatile actors to deal with internationally as it is without becoming one of them.”

Jeff Flake (1962) American politician

Source: Conscience of a Conservative (2017), p. 6

Life

“When I retired from professional chess in 2005 to join the Russian pro-democracy movement against Putin, I was frequently asked how my chess experience might help me in politics. My answer was that it wouldn’t help much at all, because in chess we had fixed rules and uncertain results, while in Russian politics it was exactly the opposite.”

Garry Kasparov (1963) former chess world champion

2010s, The Truth About Putin (2018)

Democracy, Help

“[Christian] … he felt very much like an uninitiated chess-player who sees that the pieces are in a peculiar position on the board, and might open the way for him to give checkmate, if he only knew how.”

George Eliot book Felix Holt, the Radical

Source: Felix Holt, the Radical (1866), Chapter 25 (at page 210)

Way

“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 (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

quote from Marcel Duchamp, by Kynaston McShine, 1989; as quoted on Wikipedia: Marcel Duchamp
posthumous

Beauty, Personality

“Models of human reasoning are clearly relevant to a wide variety of subject areas such as sociology, economics, psychology, artificial intelligence and man-machine systems. Broadly there are two types: psychological models of what people actually do; and formal models of what logicians and philosophers feel a rational individual would, or should, do. The main problem with the former is that it is extremely difficult to monitor thought processes - the behaviourist approach is perhaps reasonable with rats but a ridiculously inadequate source of data on man - the introspectionist approach is far more successful [e. g. in analysing human chess strategy… but the data obtained is still incomplete and may not reflect the actual thought processes involved.”

Brian R. Gaines (1938) British computer scientist

Source: Foundations of fuzzy reasoning (1976), p. 623.

People, Feeling, Intelligence, Problem

“My first goal is to create an attractive, interactive website that forms a community of chess lovers. I want to keep it light and keep people coming back ⎯ heavy on photos, humor, and simple chess tactics and strategies.”

Jennifer Shahade (1980) chess player

Gothamist interview (2006)
Context: My first goal is to create an attractive, interactive website that forms a community of chess lovers. I want to keep it light and keep people coming back ⎯ heavy on photos, humor, and simple chess tactics and strategies. I want to promote our top players to increase their visibility and their chances to make a living at chess.

People, Photo, Communication, Lovers

“A single inattention may lose a chess game, whereas a single successful approach to a problem, among many which have been relegated to the wastebasket, will make a mathematician's reputation.”

Norbert Wiener (1894–1964) American mathematician

Ex-Prodigy: My Childhood and Youth (1964)
Context: The Advantage is that mathematics is a field in which one's blunders tend to show very clearly and can be corrected or erased with a stroke of the pencil. It is a field which has often been compared with chess, but differs from the latter in that it is only one's best moments that count and not one's worst. A single inattention may lose a chess game, whereas a single successful approach to a problem, among many which have been relegated to the wastebasket, will make a mathematician's reputation.

Game, Problem, Success

“The simul is a great chess illusion. It makes the simul-giver seem like a genius, when really they’re just speaking their language.”

Jennifer Shahade (1980) chess player

Gothamist interview (2006)
Context: The biggest challenge in a simul is finding the right shoes! I want to look good in front of fifty people, but really sneakers are the best bet. I try to finish a simul as quickly as possible and don’t worry if I lose a game or two along the way. It becomes a manic workout. I’m literally running around playing moves as fast as my fingers and legs will go. My brain usually follows.
The simul is a great chess illusion. It makes the simul-giver seem like a genius, when really they’re just speaking their language. Chessplayers rely so heavily on instincts developed from years of training and practice. Chess is not all about thinking, there’s a lot of feeling involved.

“Good decision-making is like playing chess”

Nigel Cumberland (1967) British author and leadership coach

page 170 <br class="br">Your Job-Hunt Ltd – Advice from an Award-Winning Asian Headhunter (2003), Successful Recruitment in a Week (2012) https://books.google.ae/books?idp24GkAsgjGEC&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIGjAA#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, Managing Teams in a Week (2013) https://books.google.ae/books?idqZjO9_ov74EC&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIIDAB#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, Secrets of Success at Work – 50 techniques to excel (2014) https://books.google.ae/books?id4S7vAgAAQBAJ&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIJjAC#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse <br class="br">Context: Good decision-making is like playing chess and you must avoid making hasty decisions without thinking of how that particular decision will impact on different aspects of your work and organization. The worst kind of decision-making is to decide to delay a difficult decision until later or to pass it to someone else to have to make. You will never excel and be valued by your colleagues if you get into these habits of procrastination and passing responsibility to others.

Decision

“The life, the fortune, and the happiness of every one of us, and, more or less, of those who are connected with us, do depend upon our knowing something of the rules of a game infinitely more difficult and complicated than chess.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

1860s, A Liberal Education and Where to Find It (1868)
Context: The life, the fortune, and the happiness of every one of us, and, more or less, of those who are connected with us, do depend upon our knowing something of the rules of a game infinitely more difficult and complicated than chess. It is a game which has been played for untold ages, every man and woman of us being one of the two players in a game of his or her own. The chessboard 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. To the man who plays well, the highest stakes are paid, with that sort of overflowing generosity with which the strong shows delight in strength. And one who plays ill is checkmated — without haste, but without remorse.

Life, Happiness, Game, Dependency

“Whatever plans we may make, we shall find quite useless when the time for action comes. Revolutions are always full of surprises, and whoever thinks he can play chess with a revolution will soon find how terrible is the grasp of God and how insignificant the human reason before the whirlwind of His breath.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

22 February 1908
India's Rebirth
Context: Whatever plans we may make, we shall find quite useless when the time for action comes. Revolutions are always full of surprises, and whoever thinks he can play chess with a revolution will soon find how terrible is the grasp of God and how insignificant the human reason before the whirlwind of His breath. That man only is likely to dominate the chances of a Revolution, who makes no plans but preserves his heart pure for the will of God to declare itself. The great rule of life is to have no schemes but one unalterable purpose. If the will is fixed on the purpose it sets itself to accomplish, then circumstances will suggest the right course; but the schemer finds himself always tripped up by the unexpected.

God, Thinking, Time

“Chess truly uncovers whether or not someone has imagination and takes initiative.”

Christian Morgenstern (1871–1914) German author

Imagination

“You know, even more than playing chess, I dislike dealing with self-righteous chess players.”

Algis Budrys book Michaelmas

Source: Michaelmas (1977), Chapter 7 (p. 98)

Self-confidence

“His real talent lay above his shoulders. His was easily the hockey brain of the century. He could see a field the way a chess player sees the board. He knew where his teammates were, and more importantly where his opponents were - without looking. It was almost psychic.”

Dhyan Chand (1905–1979) Indian field hockey player

Dhyan Chand (a biographical sketch)

Way, Hockey

“Why do you like to play chess so well?”

Robert A. Heinlein book They

“Because it is the only thing in the world where I can see all the factors and understand all the rules.”
They (p. 55)
Short fiction, Off the Main Sequence (2005)

“A few months back Major Terry and his pet student, Drosen, had brought in a guy from San Diego to play chess with me. I’d had no idea that he was rated and was really good, so I’d beaten his ass real fast. He’d gotten all mad at Major Terry and Drosen for not telling him that I was as good as I was. He’d accused them of setting him up to publicly embarrass him. I’d had no idea what the big fuss was all about. I hadn’t even realized that there was such a thing as tournaments and championships for chess just like we had in wrestling. I’d quit playing chess at school after that incident. Now I only played at home with my dad’s older friends, Roberto and Salvador Montoya, who’d both been very good chess players in Mexico City. I beat Roberto almost all the time, but his older brother Salvador beat me pretty regularly. And I’d recently been told that Salvador had been so good that he’d once gone to Cuba to play and that he’d come in third among some of the best international players in the world.”

Victor Villaseñor (1940) American writer

Crazy Loco Love: A Memoir (2008)

World, School, Guy, Home

“To wear away the time, we learn to play chess,
In thousands, horses and infantry chase each other.
Move quickly into action, in attack or in retreat.
Talent and swift feet give us the upper hand.”

Ho Chi Minh (1890–1969) Vietnamese communist leader and first president of Vietnam

"Learning to Play Chess"
1950's

Learning, Time, Horse

“If science, and devoting oneself to it, had no other use than avoiding exhausting temptations, rushes of hope that give worry, and thoughts that sadden the soul, that alone should give us reasons to seek it… Kinglets have sought distraction in chess, wine, music, hunting and much else that only bring harm in this world and the other.”

Ibn Hazm (994–1064) Arab theologian

ibid

World, Hope, Music, Soul

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

Even if we knew every rule, however, we might not be able to understand why a particular move is made in the game, merely because it is too complicated and our minds are limited. If you play chess you must know that it is easy to learn all the rules, and yet it is often very hard to select the best move or to understand why a player moves as he does. So it is in nature, only much more so.
volume I; lecture 2, "Basic Physics"; section 2-1, "Introduction"; p. 2-1
The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1964)

God, World, Imagination, Game

“If to cast aside spread by our opponents' nonsense, I’ll use chess-players phrase: we have sacrificed quantity to quality and showed such respect to our partners and readiness to properly account for their interests which others neither could or wished to reveal.”

Viktor Yanukovych (1950) Ukrainian politician who was the President of Ukraine

Source: "Speech by Prime Minister of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych at the International conference "Ukraine and European Union: new approaches"" http://old.kmu.gov.ua/kmu/control/en/publish/article?art_id=69148733&cat_id=244315174 (28 February 2007)

“As a chess player, I know that strategy is the future impact of present decisions. However grand our plans are for two, five, even ten moves ahead, it's the move that we make now that determines that future.”

Garry Kasparov (1963) former chess world champion

2020s, Stand with Ukraine in the fight against evil (2022)

Decision, Future

Quotes about chess page 2

Quotes about chess
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