Chess/Quotes

General

"Vimes had never got on with any game much more complex than darts. Chess in particular had always annoyed him. It was the dumb way the pawns went off and slaughtered their fellow pawns while the kings lounged about doing nothing that always got to him; if only the pawns united, maybe talked the rooks round, the whole board could've been a republic in a dozen moves."

—Thud!

"Bishops move diagonally. That's why they often turn up where the kings don't expect them to be."

—Small Gods

"If chess is a battle then Go is war."

—Anonymous

"Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go back in the same box."

—Italian Proverb

"The winner of the game is the player who makes the next-to-last mistake."

—Savielly Tartakower

"The passion for playing chess is one of the most unaccountable in the world. It slaps the theory of natural selection in the face. It is the most absorbing of occupations, the least satisfying of desires, an aimless excrescence upon life. It annihilates a man."

—H. G. Wells

"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

"It's easy to get obsessed with chess."

—Magnus Carlsen, 2nd highest rated player in history

"Life is too short for chess."

—Henry James Byron (1835-1884)

"That is the fault of life, not chess."

—Leslie Burgin (1887-1945)

What is chess?

"Chess is a storm against man."

—Mikhail Tal, 8th World Champion

"Chess is like life."

—Boris Spassky, 10th World Champion

"Chess is life."

—Bobby Fischer, 11th World Champion

"Chess is everything -- art, science, and sport."

—Anatoly Karpov, 12th World Champion

"Chess is mental torture."

—Garry Kasparov, 13th World Champion, highest ranked player in history

"Chess is like body-building."

—Vladimir Kramnik, 14th World Champion

"Chess is... a way of life, a passion."

—Viswanathan Anand, 15th World Champion, third highest ranked player in history