The Chessmaster/Quotes
The truth? Hex wants the truth. Where to start? The most important truth you never learned, Hexxie boy is that when the chips are down, The Doctor only ever thinks about himself. You see, it's just a chess game for him. He is the King -- All clever and very impressive but very hands-off with the nitty-gritty. He sits at the back and sends everyone else rushing about, doing his dirty work, all those plans and strategies and tinkering, sending wave after wave of pawns to die while he keeps his conscience clean.
All warfare is based on deception.
—Sun Tzu, The Art of War
It's like you're playing checkers... And I'm playing chess.
The Patrician disliked the word 'dictator.' It affronted him. He never told anyone what to do. He didn't have to, that was the wonderful part. A large part of his life consisted of arranging matters so that this state of affairs continued [...] Human nature, the Patrician always said, was a marvelous thing. Once you understood where its levers were.
You're one microscopic cog in his catastrophic plan,
Designed and directed by his Red Right Hand!—Nick Cave, "Red Right Hand"
I really can't stand bastards like you guys who think they can plan out every little thing!
—Aisha Clan-Clan, Outlaw Star
Everything happens for a reason, little one. And that reason is me.
—The "Voice of Tzeentch", Warhammer 40,000
Thank God I'm only watching the game - controlling it
I don't see you guys rating
The kind of mate I'm contemplating
I'd let you watch, I would invite you
But the queens we use would not excite you—One Night in Bangkok, The American, Chess
Everything that has transpired has done so according to my design.
Humans aren't chess pieces, they do after all have free will--to some degree--but a good player can still use them. In fact, playing humans is harder. Or maybe I should say it simply requires different skills.
Danny: I don't understand...
Vlad: What? That I used two fourteen-year-old pawns to turn a knight and topple a king? It's chess, Daniel. Of course you don't understand. But then, you never really did.
I love it when a plan comes together.
—Col. Hannibal Smith, The A-Team
Now you understand? Can you see the mind behind all these events that would seem to be entirely random? In our world, everything happens to serve an end. Everything has its reason and its logic. And those who wont move under these maxims only deserve to lick the boots of those who have reason in both hands. And if something as simple as a man, a woman and a book, put an end to all of your glory, then you are nothing. You have no power. You're not intelligent nor wise. You are not Materia nor important. Just a pawn in a good position.
—Lorenzo, Crónicas de un Mundo Perdido
Fancy what a game of chess would be if all the chessmen had passions and intellects, more or less small and cunning; if you were not only uncertain about your adversary's men, but a little uncertain also about your own; if your knight could shuffle himself on to a new square by the sly; if your bishop, at your castling, could wheedle your pawns out of their places; and if your pawns, hating you because they are pawns, could make away from their appointed posts that you might get checkmate on a sudden. You might be the longest-headed of deductive reasoners, and yet you might be beaten by your own pawns. You would be especially likely to be beaten, if you depended arrogantly on your mathematical imagination, and regarded your passionate pieces with contempt. Yet this imaginary chess is easy compared with the game a man has to play against his fellow-men with other fellow-men for his instruments.
—Felix Holt by George Eliot
Glon: I'm just going to go put into motion a chain of events that will rock the very foundations of the seats of power from here to the outer edges of the North Realm.
Maula Bloodhand: Is this fueled by any aspirations for your own advancement or are you doing it for the good of the many?
Glon: Oh neither. I'm enjoying the sheer beauty of chaos. But if any doors happen to open my way...
Maula Bloodhand: That's my boy
All the pieces matter.
Hook, line... and sinker.
—Simon Gruber, Die Hard With a Vengeance
Information is my weapon Shepard.
He is the Napoleon of crime, Watson. He is the organiser of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city. He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order. He sits motionless, like a spider in the centre of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them. He does little himself. He only plans. But his agents are numerous and splendidly organised. Is there a crime to be done, a paper to be abstracted, we will say, a house to be rifled, a man to be removed--the word is passed to the Professor, the matter is organised and carried out. The agent may be caught. In that case money is found for his bail or his defence. But the central power which uses the agent is never caught--never so much as suspected.
—Sherlock Holmes, The Final Problem
Life is essentially a chess game.
You have to plan and calculate and.
I am so lonely.
"Always keep your foes confused. If they are never certain who you are or what you want, they cannot know what you are like to do next. Sometimes the best way to baffle them is to make moves that have no purpose, or even seem to work against you. Remember that, Sansa, when you come to play the game."
"What... what game?"
"The only game. The game of thrones."
The Lieutenant: We just got word. The Council defied your threat. They're keep the Pro-Bending arena open.
Amon: Perfect. Everything is going according to plan.
This is Petey, a massively parallel melded intelligence, and Emperor Pius Dei of the Plenipotent Dominion.
[...]
He is philanthropic, benevolent and cuddly, but he is never not playing you.— Schlock Mercenary, May 27, 2015