69 Chess Quotes

I usually never stay at the board after a game. Especially against Spassky. I made a dumb suggestion and he refuted it instantly! I know I'm going to have to play him some day and it was really stupid to look like such a jerk in front of him.

Americans like a winner. If you lose, you're nothing. I'm going to win, though. It's good for the match that Spassky has a plus score against me. We've met five times. He's won three times and we've drawn twice. But I'm a stronger player and a long match favors me.

I'm not afraid of Spassky. The world knows I'm the best. You don't need a match to prove it.

Yeah, there are too many Jews in chess. They seem to have taken away the class of the game. They don't seem to dress so nicely, you know. That's what I don't like.

Sometimes girls write me. One girl in Yugoslavia sent me a whole slew of love letters. I don't know how she got my address. She was in a crowd watching me play. She says when I left there the stars fell out of the sky over Yugoslavia, or something like that.

They're all weak, all women. They're stupid compared to men. They shouldn't play chess, you know. They're like beginners. They lose every single game against a man. There isn't a woman player in the world I can't give knight-odds to and still beat.

The turning point in my career came with the realization that Black should play to win instead of just steering for equality.

For the first lesson, I want you to play over every column of Modern Chess Openings, including the footnotes. And for the next lesson, I want you to do it again.

Concentrate on material gains. Whatever your opponent gives you take, unless you see a good reason not to.

You know I'm finished with the old chess because it's all just a lot of book and memorization you know.

The old chess is too limited. Imagine playing cards, black jack for example, and every time the dealer has the same starting hand you have the same starting hand. What's the point?

Karpov, Kasparov, Korchnoi have absolutely destroyed chess by their immoral, unethical, prearranged games. These guys are really the lowest dogs around, and if people knew the truth about them, they would be held in more contempt than Ben Johnson, the runner, and they're going to know the truth when I do this book!

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

[Chess] is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something very clever, when they are only wasting their time.

There are tough players and nice guys, and I'm a tough player.

It's just you and your opponent at the board and you're trying to prove something.

I am the best player in the world and I am here to prove it.

I know people who have all the will in the world, but still can't play good chess.

My opponents make good moves too. Sometimes I don't take these things into consideration.

Well, I kind of split my life into two pieces. One was where my chess career lies. There, I kept my sanity, so to speak, and my logic. And the other was my religious life. I tried to apply what I learned in the church to my chess career too. But I still was studying chess. I wasn't just 'trusting in God' to give me the moves.

There is then no analogy whatever between the operations of the Chess-Player, and those of the calculating machine of Mr. Babbage, and if we choose to call the former a pure machine we must be prepared to admit that it is, beyond all comparison, the most wonderful of the inventions of mankind.

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

Chess demands total concentration and a love for the game.

Chess is a matter of delicate judgment, knowing when to punch and how to duck.

I love chess, and I hate the Russians because they've almost ruined it.

They constantly use the words eccentric, eccentric, eccentric, weird. I am boring. I am boring!

Tactics flow from a positionally superior game.

Chess is mental torture.

Morphy and Capablanca had enormous talent, Steinitz was very great too. Alekhine was great, but I am not a big fan of his. Maybe it's just my taste. I've studied his games a lot, but I much prefer Capablanca and Morphy. Alekhine had a rather heavy style, Capablanca was much more brilliant and talented, he had a real light touch. Everyone I've spoken to who saw Capablanca play still speak of him with awe. If you showed him any position he would instantly tell you the right move. When I used to go to the Manhattan Chess Club back in the fifties, I met a lot of old-timers there who knew Capablanca, because he used to come around to the Manhattan club in the forties - before he died in the early forties. They spoke about Capablanca with awe. I have never seen people speak about any chess player like that, before or since. Capablanca really was fantastic. But even he had his weaknesses, especially when you play over his games with his notes he would make idiotic statements like 'I played the rest of the game perfectly.' But then you play through the moves and it is not true at all. But the thing that was great about Capablanca was that he really spoke his mind, he said what he believed was true, he said what he felt.

I give 98 per cent of my mental energy to chess. Others give only two per cent.

That's chess, you know. One day you give a lesson, the next day your opponent gives you a lesson.

It's just a matter of throwing in a few sacrifices, then checkmate! (on playing against the Sicilian Dragon)

Chess is life.

I'm finished with the old chess, it's rotten to the core

Morphy was really the world champion. That's also a Jewish conspiracy, because he was a Catholic and they tried to say he wasn't the world champion so they could promote Steinitz, who was a Jew, as the first world champion... There was a huge conspiracy against Paul Morphy... He has no stamp! Paul Morphy has no stamp. This Jewish bitch I Love Lucy. She got a stamp! And nobody compared to Paul Morphy. All kind of Jewish actors, comedians, doctors... but Paul Morphy has never gotten a stamp. Obviously the Jews have an insane hatred toward him.

Article on Fischer and links to interviews and other material

'They're claiming that this criminal Jew Garry Kasparov -- his real name is Garry Weinstein -- is the World Champion. Which he's not, in any way. He's a common crook. He should be in prison. He should be in prison for his crimes. He has pre-arranged, in his life, thousands of games. Thousands of games. Every single tournament or match game he's ever played with Karpov was pre-arranged. Every goddamn game, and it was pre-arranged move by move. He is a crook on a big scale.' ~ Bobby Fischer

Everybody wins in chess!

'Chess is the Drosophila of artificial intelligence' (1965)