Chess sharpens the mind, stimulates concentration, improves the memory and promotes visualization.
The ideal in chess can only be a collective image, but in my opinion it is Capablanca who most closely approaches this.
Strategically important points should be overprotected. If the pieces are so engaged, they get their regard in the fact that they will then find themselves well posted in every respect.
Look at a football field. It looks like a big movie screen. This is theatre. Football combines the strategy of chess. It's part ballet. It's part battleground, part playground. We clarify, amplify and glorify the game with our footage, the narration and that music, and in the end create an inspirational piece of footage.
The battle for the ultimate truth will never be won. And that's why chess is so fascinating.
Play as often as you can.
The shortcoming of hanging pawns is that they present a convenient target for attack. As the exchange of men proceeds, their potential strength lessens and during the endgame they turn out, as a rule, to be weak.
Baseball and cricket are beautiful and highly stylized medieval war substitutes, chess made flesh, a mixture of proud chivalry and base-in both senses-greed.
Perfectly correct chess exists only in theory.
In chess, as in life, a man is his own most dangerous opponent.
Within these premises, the only thing one can be is an impeccable mediator. One is not the player in this cosmic match of chess, one is simply a pawn on the chessboard. What decides everything is a conscious impersonal energy that sorcerers call intent or the Spirit.
I still love to play chess. So I do not even spend a minute on the possibility to step back.
Have you ever seen a monkey examining a watch?
Chess is the only game greater than its players.
. . . for chess, that superb, cold, infinitely satisfying anodyne to life, I feel the ardour of a lover, the humility of a disciple.
The endgame is an arena in which miraculous escapes are not uncommon.
In my country, at that time, being a champion of chess was like being a King. At that time I was a King and when you are King you feel a lot of responsibility, but there is nobody there to help you.
It is impossible to win gracefully at chess.
As Rousseau could not compose without his cat beside him, so I cannot play chess without my king's bishop. In its absense the game to me is lifeless and void. The vitalizing factor is missing, and I can devise no plan of attack.
A woman can beat any man; it's difficult to imagine another kind of sport where a woman can beat a man. That's why I like chess.