Dvoretsky's Quotes

#1. 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

#2. It is not possible to become a great player without having learned how to analyse deeply and accurately.

Mark Dvoretsky

#3. It is very important to learn to weigh up objectively (or assess intuitively) the totality of the competitive and psychological factors.

Mark Dvoretsky

#4. As people get more desperate, history suggests that they're not going to rise in a mighty proletarian tidal wave and wash away their oppressors. They're gonna turn on each other.

Alan Moore

#5. Emotional instability can be one of the factors giving rise to a failure by chess players in important duels. Under the influence of surging emotions (and not necessarily negative ones) we sometimes lose concentration and stop objectively evaluating the events that are taking place on the board.

Mark Dvoretsky

#6. In positions of strategic manoeuvring (where time is not of decisive importance) seek the worst-placed piece. Activating that piece is often the most reliable way of improving your position as a whole.

Mark Dvoretsky

#7. At Delphi I prayed
to Apollo
that he maintain in me
the flame of the poem
and I drank of the brackish
spring there ...

Denise Levertov

#8. It is a truth that we should not settle for less, but in the 21st century it is the constant pursuit for more that ruins many.

Hope D. Blackwell

#9. We don't have a prayer of defeating the Red Threat of our generation without a long boom of almost unprecedented duration.

Mitch Daniels

#10. As a rule, pawn endings have a forced character, and they can be worked out conclusively.

Mark Dvoretsky

#11. Apple chief executive Tim Cook is such a respected figure that it's easy to overlook the basic problem with his argument about encryption: Cook is asserting that a private company and the interests of its customers should prevail over the public's interest as expressed by our courts.

David Ignatius

#12. I never knew anybody ... who found life simple. I think a life or a time looks simple when you leave out the details.

Ursula K. Le Guin

#13. I feel that it is no less interesting to be a trainer than to play oneself. I even take greater delight in the tournament successes of my lads than I do in my own.

Mark Dvoretsky

#14. If you can go through life without experiencing pain you probably haven't been born yet.

Neil Simon

#15. It is hardly useful if you trustingly play through variation after variation from a book. It is a great deal more useful and more interesting if you take part actively in the analysis, find something yourself, and try to refute some of the author's conclusions.

Mark Dvoretsky

#16. He knew where Sam worked, and he still her knew her parents' phone number by heart.

Rainbow Rowell

#17. I do not know to whom the aphorism 'There are no sound studies, only ones that haven't been busted yet' belongs, but it has measure of truth in it.

Mark Dvoretsky

#18. OK, so I'm not famous for the right reasons.

William Hung

#19. Training in analysis (like any other form of chess training) should be treated very seriously.

Mark Dvoretsky

#20. Education has no more serious responsibility than the making of adequate provision for enjoyment of recreative leisure not only for the sake of immediate health, but for the sake of its lasting effect upon the habits of the mind.

John Dewey

#21. If you are trying to impress a woman, leave any sort of show farting out of the equation.

Demetri Martin

#22. Black is now in desperate need of a good idea. Or, to put it standard chess notation, +-

Mark Dvoretsky