Wilhelm Steinitz Quotes

#1. I may be an old lion, but I can still bite someone's hand off if he puts it in my mouth.

Wilhelm Steinitz

#2. Only the player with the initiative has the right to attack.

Wilhelm Steinitz

#3. Chess is intellectual gymnastics.

Wilhelm Steinitz

#4. I am not a chess historian - I myself am a piece of chess history, which no one can avoid. I will not write about myself, but I am sure that someone will write ...

Wilhelm Steinitz

#5. A sacrifice is best refuted by accepting it.

Wilhelm Steinitz

#6. Chess is not for the faint-hearted; it absorbs a person entirely. To get to the bottom of this game, he has to give himself up into slavery. Chess is difficult, it demands work, serious reflection and zealous research.

Wilhelm Steinitz

#7. The task of the positional player is systematically to accumulate slight advantages and try to convert temporary advantages into permanent ones, otherwise the player with the better position runs the risk of losing it.

Wilhelm Steinitz

#8. The king pawn and the queen pawn are the only ones to be moved in the early part of the game.

Wilhelm Steinitz

#9. In the ending the king is a powerful piece for assisting his own pawns, or stopping the adverse pawns.

Wilhelm Steinitz

#10. I shall accord to myself the honor of inscribing myself as an applicant for the American citizenship which according to law I can obtain only after five years residence in this country. And I shall yield to no one of my future countrymen in patriotism. I consider America now my real home.

Wilhelm Steinitz

#11. I am fully and entirely concentrated on the board. I never even consider my opponent's personality. So far as I am concerned, my opponent might as well be an abstraction or an automaton.

Wilhelm Steinitz

#12. I play my king all over the board. I make him fight!

Wilhelm Steinitz

#13. Chess is so inspiring that I do not believe a good player is capable of having an evil thought during the game.

Wilhelm Steinitz

#14. Have you ever seen a monkey examining a watch?

Wilhelm Steinitz

#15. I have never in my life played the French Defence, which is the dullest of all openings.

Wilhelm Steinitz

#16. The King is a fighting piece. Use it!

Wilhelm Steinitz

#17. A win by an unsound combination, however showy, fills me with artistic horror.

Wilhelm Steinitz

#18. Capture of the adverse King is the ultimate but not the first object of the game

Wilhelm Steinitz

#19. Chess is not for timid souls.

Wilhelm Steinitz

#20. Unfortunately, many regard the critic as an enemy, instead of seeing him as a guide to the truth.

Wilhelm Steinitz

#21. I would rather die in America than live in England. I would rather lose a match in America than win one in England. I have come to the conclusion that I neither mean to die soon or to lose the match!

Wilhelm Steinitz

#22. When you have an advantage, you are obliged to attack; otherwise you are endangered to lose the advantage.

Wilhelm Steinitz

#23. Fame, I have already. Now I need the money.

Wilhelm Steinitz