Garry Kasparov Chess Quotations

Chess helps you to concentrate, improve your logic. It teaches you to play by the rules and take responsibility for your actions, how to problem solve in an uncertain environment.

Women, by their nature, are not exceptional chess players: they are not great fighters.

It's quite difficult for me to imagine my life without chess.

There are fixed rules in chess, and no one knows how the game will end.

There can be no finer example of the inspiring powers of competition to shatter the status quo than Hungary's Judit Polgar.

Thanks to the Polgars the adjective 'men's' before events and the 'affirmative action' women's titles such as Woman Grandmaster have become anachronisms.

Kortchnoi's heritage is many-faceted - over the decades he has several times corrected and changed his style. But the main thing has invariably remained his search for chess truth.

The public must come to see that chess is a violent sport. Chess is mental torture.

I dropped the King's Indian in 1997 after one too many bad experiences against Kramnik.

With this mistake I deprived myself of the possibility to make a contribution to the treasury of chess art.

Chess is life in miniature. Chess is struggle, chess is battles

The legend of the best player of chess has been destroyed.

Few things are as psychologically brutal as chess.

Ultimately, what separates a Winner from a Loser at the Grandmaster level is the Willingness to do the Unthinkable.

In conclusion, if you want to unravel the multitude of secrets of chess then don't begrudge the time.

Chess is an art and not a spectator sport.

In chess, bigamy is acceptable but monarchy is absolute.

By this measure (on the gap between Fischer & his contemporaries), I consider him the greatest world champion

I feel that my chess strengths are still here, .. I believe I can still improve.

Chess is one of the few arts where composition takes place simultaneously with performance

It's true that in chess as in politics, fund-raising and glad-handing matter.

My opponent is Short and the match will be short.

Inevitably the machines must win, but there is still a long way to go before a human on his or her best day is unable to defeat the best computer.

Weaknesses of character are normally shown in a game of chess.

Chess is not dominoes

Perfectly correct chess exists only in theory.

For me, chess is a language, and if it's not my native tongue, it is one I learned via the immersion method at a young age.

In general there is something puzzling about the fact that the most renowned figures in chess - Morphy, Pillsbury, Capablanca and Fischer - were born in America.

Tactics involve calculations that can tax the human brain, but when you boil them down, they are actually the simplest part of chess and are almost trivial compared to strategy.

Though I would have liked my chances in a rematch in 1998 if I were better prepared, it was clear then that computer superiority over humans in chess had always been just a matter of time.

One does not succeed by sticking to convention. When your opponent can easily anticipate every move you make, your strategy deteriorates and becomes commoditized.

Nowadays games immediately appear on the Internet and thus the life of novelties is measured in hours. Modern professionals do not have the right to be forgetful - it is 'life threatening'.

Chess strength in general and chess strength in a specific match are by no means one and the same thing.

I see my own style as being a symbiosis of the styles of Alekhine, Tal and Fischer.

Chess is mental torture.

The biggest problem I see among people who want to excel in chess – and in business and in life in general – is not trusting their instincts enough.

The ability to work hard for days on end without losing focus is a talent. The ability to keep absorbing new information after many hours of study is a talent.

... Tarrasch's 'dogmas' are not eternal truisms, but merely instructional material presented in an accessible and witty form, those necessary rudiments from which one can begin to grasp the secrets of chess ...

Nervous energy is the ammunition we take into any mental battle. If you don't have enough of it, your concentration will fade. If you have a surplus, the results will explode.

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

Capablanca possessed an amazing ability to quickly see into a position and intuitively grasp its main features. His style, one of the purest, most crystal-clear in the entire history of chess, astonishes one with his logic.

One does not succeed by sticking to convention.