Chess Quotes - Page 38

• It's a great huge game of chess that's being played--all over the world--if this is the world at all, you know. Oh, what fun it is! How I wish I was one of them! I wouldn't mind being a Pawn, if only I might join--though of course I should like to be a Queen, best.

  Lewis Carroll

  Life, Queens, Fun

  Lewis Carroll (2010). “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass”, Cosimo, Inc.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The sailor is frankness, the landsman is finesse. Life is not a game with the sailor, demanding the long head--no intricate game of chess where few moves are made in straight-forwardness and ends are attained by indirection, an oblique, tedious, barren game hardly worth that poor candle burnt out in playing it.

  Herman Melville

  Moving, Games, Long

  Herman Melville (2009). “Billy Budd, Sailor and Selected Tales”, p.282, OUP Oxford

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• I once heard of a murderer who propped his two victims up against a chess board in sporting attitudes and was able to get as far as Seattle before his crime was discovered.

  Robert Benchley

  Attitude, Games, Two

  Robert Benchley (2010). “The Athletic Benchley: 105 Exercises from the Detroit Athletic Club News”, p.24, Glendower Media

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Work, as we usually think of it, is energy expended for a further end in view; play is energy expended for its own sake, as with children's play, or as manifestation of the end or goal of work, as in "playing" chess or the piano. Play in this sense, then, is the fulfillment of work, the exhibition of what the work has been done for.

  Northrop Frye

  Children, Work, Thinking

  Northrop Frye, Alvin A. Lee (2006). “The Great Code: The Bible and Literature”, p.145, University of Toronto Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Diplomacy is a game of chess in which the nations are checkmated.

  Karl Kraus

  Games, Diplomacy, Nations

  Karl Kraus (1976). “Half-truths & One-and-a-half Truths: Selected Aphorisms”

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• I have nothing to do with politics. I came here [Yugoslavia] to play chess and nothing else.

  Bobby Fischer

  Yugoslavia, Play

  8 Copy quote

• Bobby Fischer was hugely important for the American chess community because it put chess on the map - he made it possible for other chess players to make a living.

  Liz Garbus

  Player, Community, Important

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• In the Soviet Union, for instance, the pressure on the chess stars was immense. When Boris Spassky came home after losing that match, he found he no longer had an apartment in Moscow.

  Liz Garbus

  Stars, Home, Moscow

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I used to play a lot of chess and competitive chess and study chess and as you get to the grandmasters and learn their styles when you start copying their games like the way they express themselves through... The way Kasparov or Bobby Fischer expresses themselves through a game of chess is it's astonishing. You can show a chess master one of their games and they'll say "Yeah, that is done by that player."

  Rainn Wilson

  Player, Games, Style

  Interview with David Hirschman, bigthink.com. November 11, 2010.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Much time and money has gone into computer chess programs, and so far, no one's figured out how to crack the game, which I think speaks to chess's complexity.

  Wells Tower

  Thinking, Games, Cracks

  "Post Magazine: The King of Dupont Circle". Live Q&As, www.washingtonpost.com. October 1, 2007.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• A character, to be acceptable as more than a chess piece, has to be ignorant of the future, unsure about the past, and not at all sure of what he's supposed to be doing.

  Anthony Burgess

  Character, Past, Chess Pieces

  Anthony Burgess (1986). “Homage to QWERT YUIOP: essays”, Vintage

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• At home I mostly stick to online Scrabble, or chess or Risk - games I find far less addictive than the spectacular games created for consoles these days. But, whenever I get the chance I head over to my friend Kyri’s house to play his PS3.

  Beau Willimon

  Home, Games, Play

  "Banging Everything in Sight: My Trip to the LA Gun Club" by Beau Willimon, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 24, 2010.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is nothing like chess to keep the brain smart, and give it a workout.

  Arnold Schwarzenegger

  Workout, Smart, Giving

  4 Copy quote

• A chess tournament disguised as a circus.

  John Connally

  Circus, Tournaments

  1964 Of US political conventions. In the National Observer. Quoted in Edwin A Roberts Jr Elections 1964 (1964).

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• To have a knight planted in your game at K6 is worse than a rusty nail in your knee.

  Efim Bogoljubov

  Knights, Games, Nails

  8 Copy quote

• The young people have read my book. Now I have no chance.

  Efim Bogoljubov

  Book, People, Chance

  6 Copy quote

• But compared with the task of selecting a piece of French pastry held by an impatient waiter a move in chess is like reaching for a salary check in its demand on the contemplative faculties.

  Robert Benchley

  Moving, Salary, Tasks

  Robert Benchley (1976). “Chips Off the Old Benchley”, Amereon Limited

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• We lived in the provincial town of Ramat Gan where I spent most of my youth adjacent to the chess board.

  Arnon Goldfinger

  Boards, Towns, Youth

  "Meet the 2012 Tribeca Filmmakers #18: ‘The Flat’ Director Arnon Goldfinger". www.indiewire.com. April 11, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I can remember times coming home from a chess club at four in the morning when I was half asleep and half dead and forcing myself to pray an hour and study an hour. You know, I was half out of my mind-stoned almost.

  Bobby Fischer

  Morning, Home, Half

  "Scorecard" by Robert H. Boyle, www.si.com. November 21, 1977.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• The Russians have fixed world chess.

  Bobby Fischer

  World, Fixed

  Bobby Fischer, Leonard Barden (1972). “Bobby Fischer's Chess Games”

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Botvinnik was a killer in chess.

  Yuri Averbakh

  Killers

  7 Copy quote

• Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual ... may well be the chess book of the year... [It] comes close to an ultimate one-volume manual on the endgame.

  Lubomir Kavalek

  Book, Years, May

  4 Copy quote

• Chess is most certainly not my life.

  Tony Miles

  7 Copy quote

• Obama is like a chess player who is playing simultaneous chess and has opened his game with an unusual opening.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Player, Games, Unusual

  "Obama Is Like a Chess Player". Interview with Jan Fleischhauer and Gabor Steingart, www.spiegel.de. July 6, 2009.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• I got arrested for playing chess in the street. I said, it's because I'm black, isn't it.

  Milton Jones

  Funny, Humor, Black

  12 Copy quote