quotations about chess
Chess is just a game. Real people are not pieces. You can't assign more value to some of them and not others. Not to me. Not to anyone. People are not a thing that you can sacrifice. The lesson is, anyone who looks on to the world as if it is a game of chess, deserves to lose.
HAROLD FINCH
Person of Interest
This game the Persian Magi did invent,
The force of Eastern wisdom to express:
From thence to busy Europeans sent,
And styled by modern Lombards pensive chess.
SIR J. DENHAM
"An Occasional Imitation of a Modern Author Upon the Game of Chess"
Chess makes men wiser and clear-sighted.
VLADIMIR PUTIN
attributed, "50 Greatest Chess Quotes Of All Time"
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.
EMO PHILIPS
attributed, The Mammoth Book of Comic Quotes
Chess is a domain in which criticism has not so much influence as in art; for in the domain of chess the results of games decide, ultimately and finally.
RICHARD RETI
Modern Ideas in Chess
Chess is ruthless: you’ve got to be prepared to kill people.
NIGEL SHORT
London Observer, Aug. 11, 1991
I set out the chess board. I filled a pipe, paraded the chessmen and inspected them for French shaves and loose buttons, and played a championship tournament game between Gortchakoff and Meninkin, seventy-two moves to a draw, a prize specimen of the irresistible force meeting the immovable object, a battle without armor, a war without blood, and as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you could find anywhere outside an advertising agency.
RAYMOND CHANDLER
The Long Goodbye
Chess is too troublesome a game for some men's brains; it is too full of anxiety, all but as bad as study; besides it is a testy, choleric game, and very offensive to him that loseth the mate.
ROBERT BURTON
The Anatomy of Melancholy
Fancy what a game at 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, in disgust 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 deducted 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. He thinks himself sagacious, perhaps, because he trusts no bond except that of self-interest; but the only self-interest he can safely rely on is what seems to be such to the mind he would use or govern. Can he ever be sure of knowing this?
GEORGE ELIOT
Felix Holt, the Radical
A Passed Pawn increases in strength as the number of pieces on the board diminishes.
JOSÉ RAÚL CAPABLANCA
Chess Fundamentals
Count on the game, fancy it a reliable passion. Yet when the sacraments of chess trump human relationships, life can lose depth and richness. The game eclipses a person's real life and relationships, and the pieces on a board become more significant than relationships with family and friends. Some chess zealots find it difficult to manage well in everyday life, or to integrate the world of chess with the world at large.
ROBERT R. DESJARLAIS
Counterplay: An Anthropologist at the Chessboard
The pawns are the soul of chess.
FRANÇOIS-ANDRÉ DANICAN PHILIDOR
Analyse du jeu des Échecs
Chess is a sea in which a gnat may drink and an elephant may bathe.
INDIAN PROVERB
Amberley excelled at chess--one mark, Watson, of a scheming mind.
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
"The Adventure of the Retired Colourman"
Subject to the universal law of change, Chess is happily not yet so perfect as to find progress in decay. It will and must continue to suffer innovations, making for healthy growth and logical consistency, though its fundamental principles and essential theories may never be seriously disturbed.
JAMES MASON
The Principles of Chess in Theory & Practice
Chess is particularly the game of the unappreciated, who seek in play that success which life has denied them.
RICHARD RETI
Modern Ideas in Chess
It's hard to understand why people who have enough time to play chess want to spend it playing chess.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
Chess is the gymnasium of the mind.
PASCAL
attributed, Essential Chess Quotations
I failed to make the chess team because of my height.
WOODY ALLEN
attributed, Counterplay: An Anthropologist at the Chessboard
Wherever chess is mentioned in old chronicles or metrical romances, it is as the occasion of some act of violence or bitter feud. The great size of the early chessmen, and the use of metal in the boards, must have rendered them tempting weapons for an angry man--the rooks especially seem to have been often used as Homer's heroes employ some huge stone.
HOWARD STAUNTON
"The Chess-Player's Handbook,", Littell's Living Age, Aug. 18, 1849