Chess quotes .....

"I love all positions. Give me a difficult positional game, I will play it. Give me a bad position, I will defend it. Openings, endgames, complicated positions, dull draws, I love them and I will do my very best. But totally won positions, I cannot stand them."
Hein Donner, Clubblad DD, 1950

"If one would cancel all traffic rules and switch off all traffic lights, watching city traffic on TV would be also awfully interesting!"
Oleg Romanishin on FIDE's efforts to make chess a TV spectator sport, quoted by Rustam Kasimdzhanov in Chess Today

"Oh! this opponent, this collaborator against his will, whose notion of Beauty always differs from yours and whose means (strength, imagination, technique) are often too limited to help you effectively! What torment, to have your thinking and your phantasy tied down by another person!"
Alexander Alekhine, foreword to Mes Problèmes et études d'échecs, Fred. Lazard, 1929

"The profuse phallic symbolism of chess provides some fantasy gratification of the homosexual wish, particularly the desire for mutual masturbation."
Reuben Fine, The Psychology of the Chess Player, 1956

"When you absolutely don't know what to do anymore, it is time to panic."
John van der Wiel

"Yes, I have played a blitz game once. It was on a train, in 1929."
Mikhail Botvinnik, interviewed by Genna Sosonko in 1989

"They asked me what year it was, what month it was, etc. I easily answered these stupid questions."
Bobby Fischer, I was Tortured in the Pasadena Jailhouse!, 1982

"Poor Capablanca! Thou wert a brilliant technician, but no philosopher. Thou wert not capable of believing that in chess, another style could be victorious than the absolutely correct one."
Max Euwe, Tijdschrift van den Nederlandschen Schaakbond, 1942

"You know, comrade Pachman, I don't enjoy being a Minister, I would rather play chess like you, or make a revolution in Venezuela."
Che Guevara, quoted in Ludek Pachman, Checkmate in Prague, 1975

"If drink is the curse of the working classes and work is the curse of the drinking classes then chess is the curse of the thinking classes "

-- J. Ross

* "A wood-pusher overlooks the ranks." -- RUSSIAN SAYING
* "The hardest game to win is a won game." -- Em. LASKER

" Actually, the hardest game to win is a lost game." -- Dr.Dave

* "There just isn't enough televised chess." -- LETTERMAN
* "Some part of a mistake is always correct." -- TARTAKOVER
* "Pawn endings are to chess what putting is to golf." -- PURDY
* "There is no remorse like the remorse of chess." -- H.G.WELLS
* "You can't play chess if you're groggy from pills." -- KARPOV
* "All chess masters can play one game blindfolded." -- KOLTANOWSKI
* "When the going gets tactical, the computers get going." -- HYATT
* "Morphy was probably the greatest genius of them all." -- FISCHER
* "No price is too great for the scalp of the enemy King." -- KOBLENTZ
* "There are two types of sacrifices: correct ones and mine." -- TAL
* "You cannot play at chess if you are kind-hearted." -- FRENCH PROVERB
* "The life of the American chess master is a `vale of tears'." -- FRIAS
* "Fame, I have already. Now I need the money." -- an elderly STEINITZ
* "It's always better to sacrifice your opponent's men." -- TARTAKOVER
* "An isolated Pawn spreads gloom all over the chessboard." -- TARTAKOVER
* "The first principle of attack--Don't let the opponent develop!" -- FINE
* "When you see a good move--wait--look for a better one." -- Em. LASKER
* "Chess is played with the mind and not with the hands!" -- RENAUD and KAHN
* "Creating an undesired stalemate is the height of stupidity." -- ANONYMOUS
* "To avoid losing a piece, many a person has lost the game." -- TARTAKOVER
* "The blunders are all there on the board, waiting to be made." -- TARTAKOVER
* "On the chess-board lies and hypocrisy do not survive long." -- Em. LASKER
* "I think it's almost definite that the game is a draw theoretically." -- FISCHER

"The delight in gambits is a sign of chess youth... In very much the same way as the young man, on reaching his manhood years, lays aside the Indian stories and stories of adventure, and turns to the psychological novel, we with maturing experience leave off gambit playing and become interested in the less vivacious but withal more forceful manoeuvres of the position player."

-- Emanuel LASKER

"Nimzovitch became then for me more or less the author of the only book which could help me get away from these Euwe books, which, I admit, are very good for the ordinary club player. But once you've reached a certain strength you get the impression that everything that Euwe writes is a lie."

-- Bent LARSEN, in KEENE, Nimzowitsch: a reappraisal.

"Openings teach you openings. Endgames teach you chess!"

-- Stephan Gerzadowicz, US Postal Chess Master

"In order to improve your game, you must study the endgame before everything else, for whereas the the endings can be studied and mastered by themselves, the middle game and the opening must be studied in relation to the endgame."

-- Jose Raul Capablanca, World Champion 1921-1927