"Even a poor plan is better than no plan at all." Mikhail Chigorin "It is not a move, even the best move, that you must seek, but a realisable plan." Znosko-Borovsky "Methodical thinking is of more use in chess than inspiration." Purdy "Chess is the art of analysis." Botvinnik "Chess mastery essentially consists of analysing chess positions accurately." Botvinnik "Half the variations which are calculated in a tournament game turn out to be completely superfluous. Unfortunately, no one knows in advance which half." Jan Tinman "Do not ever underestimate your opponent, particularly when he is much weaker than you are. You are setting yourself up for a fall if you do this." Max Euwe "How does Tal win? He developes all his pieces to the center and then sacrifices them somewhere." Bobby Fischer "One day you give a lesson, the next day your opponent gives you a lesson." Bobby Fischer "One bad move nullified forty good ones." I. A. Horowitz "Place the board so that the sun is in your opponent's eyes." Ruy López "Try to play after you opponent has eaten or drunk freely." Lucena, 1497 "May my fearful incantation bewitch him so that peril shall beset two or three of his pieces at once! May the Queen lose her life! May the wee pawns grow fewer and fewer on the squares and may he be mated both with the low and high mates!" Father Stefan Olafsson, 1650 "No chess grandmaster is normal; they only differ in the extent of their madness." Viktor Korchnoi "Everybody blunders, even grandmasters." Bent Larsen "Lack of patience is probably the most common reason for losing a game." Bent Larsen "The opponent is always very annoying!" Bent Larsen "There just isn't enough televised chess." David Letterman "When Spassky offers you a piece, you may just as well resign, but when Tal offers you a piece, go on playing, he may sacrifice another, and then ... who knows?" Miguel Najdorf "...if any man plays at chess and should quarrel in consequence and kill his opponent, such homicide shall be accounted involuntary and not voluntary ... for he employeth himself in a lawful work." Pope Innocent III "Why must I lose to this idiot?!" Aaron Nimzovitch "A quiet move often makes the earth shake." Richard Reti "If your opponent offers you a draw, try to work out why he thinks he is worse off." Nigel Short "A good sacrifice is one that is not necessarily sound, but leaves your opponent dazed and confused." Rudolph Spielmann "When I asked Fischer why he had not played a certain move in our game, he replied: 'Well, you laughed when I wrote it down!'" Mikhail Tal "No game was ever won by resigning." Savielly Tartakower "Whenever you have to make a rook move and both rooks are available for said move - you should evaluate which rook to move and, once you have made up your mind... MOVE THE OTHER ONE!!!" GM Oscar Panno "You can retreat pieces... but not pawns. So always think twice about pawn moves." Michael Stean "Chess is neither a science nor an art. It is what human nature most delights in--a fight." Emanuel Lasker "Chess is a fairy tale of 1001 blunders" Savielly Tartakower "I am always happy to buy my opponent a steak dinner right before we play!" Walter Brown "Chess is life" Bobby Fischer "Chess is like life" Boris Spassky "Chess is everything -- art, science, and sport." Karpov "Chess is 99 percent tactics." Teichmann "Chess is really 99 percent calculation" Soltis "Chess is mental torture." Kasparov "There is no such thing as a friendly game of chess." Jon Saboe "Chess, like love, like music, has the power to make men happy." Tarrasch "You cannot play at chess if you are kind-hearted." French Proverb "Morphy was probably the greatest genius of them all." Fischer "Every chess master was once a beginner." Chernev "A good player is always lucky." Capablanca "A chess game is divided into three stages: the first, when you hope you have the advantage, the second when you believe you have an advantage, and the third... when you know you're going to lose!" Tartakower "When you see a good move wait -- look for a better one." Emanuel Lasker "Play the opening like a book, the middle game like a magician, and the endgame like a machine." Spielmann "All that matters on the chessboard is good moves." Bobby Fischer "The pawns are the soul of chess." Philidor "The blunders are all there on the board, waiting to be made." Tartakover "No price is too great for the scalp of the enemy King." Koblentz "The winner of the game is the player who makes the next-to-last mistake." Tartakover "A man surprised is half beaten." Proverb "There are two types of sacrifices: correct ones and mine." Tal "The defensive power of a pinned piece is only imaginary." Nimzovich "The pin is mightier than the sword." Reinfeld "The combination player thinks forward; he starts from the given position, and tries the forceful moves in his mind." Emanuel Lasker "Discovered check is the dive-bomber of the chessboard." Fine "If the student forces himself to examine all moves that smite, however absurd they may look at first glance, he is on the way to becoming a master of tactics." Purdy "The tactician knows what to do when there is something to do; whereas the strategian knows what to do when there is nothing to do. Gerald Abrahams "Examine moves that smite! A good eye for smites is far more important than a knowledge of strategical principles." Purdy "The scheme of a game is played on positional lines; the decision of it, as a rule, is effected by combinations." Reti "In chess there is only one mistake: over-estimation of your opponent. All else is either bad luck or weakness." Saviely Grigoryevich Tartakower "In the perfect chess combination as in a first-rate short story, the whole plot and counter-plot should lead up to a striking finale, the interest not being allayed until the very last moment." Yates and Winter "A thorough understanding of the typical mating continuations makes the most complicated sacrificial combinations leading up to them not only not difficult, but almost a matter of course." Tarrasch "Great players never castle." Königstedt in Kort Afhandling Swedish Chess Manual, 1784 "It's always better to sacrifice your opponent's men." Tartakover "All chessplayers should have a hobby." Tartakover "The middlegame I repeat is chess itself; chess with all its possibilities, its attacks, defences, sacrifices, etc. Znosko-Borovsky "Before the endgame, the gods have placed the middlegame." Tarrasch "Every pawn is a potential Queen." Mason "The Passed Pawn is a criminal, who should be kept under lock and key. Mild measures, such as police surveillance, are not sufficient." Nimzovich "A Passed Pawn increases in strength as the number of pieces on the board diminishes." Capablanca "Any material change in a position must come about by mate, a capture, or a Pawn promotion." Purdy "The Eighth Square at last!" she cried... "Oh, how glad I am to get here. And what is this on my head?" Alice in 'Through the Looking Glass' "I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists." Marcel Duchamp "Tactics is knowing what to do when there is something to do. Strategy is knowing what to do when there is nothing to do." Savielly Tartakover "Chess is imagination." David Bronstein