Some Chess Related Quotations

"Chess is the only game greater than its players"
Adapted from 'Chess' the musical.

"Chess is the gymnasium of the mind."
Lenin

"If you're too busy to play chess... you're too busy."
Unknown

"Thus the Devil played at chess with me, and yielding a pawn, thought to gain a queen of me, taking advantage of my honest endeavours."
Thomas Brown

"Well, your son is a brilliant strategist, a superb tactician, and a workaholic, he has unbreakable concentration, excellent opening preparation, and impeccable technique, but unfortunately, he has no talent whatsoever."
Adapted

"Life's too short for chess."
Henry J Byron

"A pawn is a pawn."
Unknown

"If the point of playing chess is as a battle of the intellect then most people would say that the memorization of other peoples ideas is something that is anathema to the spirit of chess."
Nigel Davies

"Chess is too much to be merely a game but too little to be anything more."
Unknown

"Pawns are the soul of chess."
Philidor

"I'd rather have a pawn than a finger."
Rueben Fine

"Chess is 90% tactics"
Teichmann

"The beauty of a move lies not in its' appearance but in the thought behind it"
Unknown

"Chess is not an equation."
Unknown

"Chess is not dominoes"
Kasparov  (referring to the Grob [to read more about the Grob click here]!)

"You may have the bishop pair but I have the ultimate advantage; I am the better player!"
Adams

"Now I have the pawn and the compensation."
Unknown

"Draws make me angry."
Romanishin

"I don't want to make the wrong mistake."
Unknown

"Some part of a mistake is always correct."
Probably the same person

"Rook endgames a pawn up are drawn. Rook endgames a pawn down are lost."
Walsh

"Checkmates don't work if there's no one answering the door."
(In reference to correspondence chess.)

"A real chess game can only be experienced by two people."
Donner

"To be a professional chess player is to spend your life living out of suitcases and fighting for control of the d5 square."
Adapted

"And the Devil bared his teeth in a grin as he pushed his c-pawn one square, for the Caro-Kann comes from the deepest pits of Hell."
Shternshain

"Our game is just too difficult for ordinary intelligent people."
Donner

"When you absolutely don't know what to do anymore, it is time to panic."
Unknown

"Chess is just a rhyme without a reason."
Adapted (!)

"If cunning alone were needed to excel, women would be the best chess players".
Albin

"Women are far too sensible to play chess."
A woman

"Chess is beautiful enough to waste your life for."
Hans Ree

"When it is dark enough, you can see the stars."
Beard

"Chess is thirty to forty percent psychology. You don't have this when you play a computer. I can't confuse it. "
Judith Polgar

"Chess is a beautiful mistress."
Larsen

"All we have gained then by our unbelief is a life of doubt diversified by faith, for one of faith diversified by doubt: we called the chess-board white, - we call it black."
Robert Browning

"Do not be in a hurry to do something you can't undo."
Unknown

"Even a poor plan is better than no plan at all."
Mikhail Chigorin

"Weak pawns are those which require smoke signals to communicate!"
Adapted

"England has no Grandmaster weaker than Raymond Keene."
Most drunk Grandmasters

"I thought I was playing the world champion, not some 27-eyed monster who sees everything in all positions."
Tony Miles

"You can permit yourself any liberty in the opening except the luxury of a passive position."
Grigory Sanakoev

"I'll take my five positions per second any day, thank you"
Viswanathan Anand (comparing humans with chess computers.)

"A quiet move in the midst of an attack is the master's trademark."
Adapted

"I don't have any solution, but I certainly admire the problem."
Unknown

"A good player is always lucky."
Capablanca

"'Good Enough' is the enemy of excellence."
Unknown

"A game is always won through a mistake."
Tartakower

"Pawns are born free, yet are everywhere in chains..."
Soltis

"Black is now in desperate need of a good idea. Or, to put it standard chess notation, +-"
Dvoretsky

"You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you."
Some politician

"I don't know what I am going to play, so how can he know what I am going to play!"
Bisguier

"An isolated pawn spreads gloom all over the chessboard."
Unknown

"Never copy yourself, always copy someone else."
Picasso

"Nobody ever won a game by resigning."
Unknown

"Chess players have unpleasant characteristics. They are (to a degree, of course) proud, argumentative, over-cautious and deceitful."
Alliston

"When you see a good move, sit on your hands and find a better one."
Adams

"Have you ever seen a monkey examining a watch?"
Steinitz

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

"Remember, half the chess players you know are below average."
Adapted (!)

"Knights are cavalry, bishops are archers, rooks are cannons and queens are wizards."
Aagaard

"A descriptive justification can be given for almost every mistake."
Adapted from Davies

"Chess, insanity and politics have always been inextricably connected"
Hurst

"If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something."
Unknown pessimist

"I was still too weak to understand his chess ideas at that time but I remember being covered in smoke."
Shirov (referring to Tal)

"Chess is a sea in which a mosquito can bathe and an elephant can drown"
Unknown

"Chess is a cure for headaches."
John Maynard Keynes

"Of chess it has been said that life is not long enough for it, but that is the fault of life, not chess."
Unknown

"The blunders are all there on the board, waiting to be made."
Unknown

"All obvious moves look dubious in analysis after the game."
Korchnoi