Top 100 Kasparov's Quotes
#1. While reading Kasparov's book How Life Imitates Chess on my Kindle, I idly clicked on "popular highlights" to see what passages other readers had found interesting - and wound up becoming fascinated by a section on chess strategy I'd only lightly skimmed myself.
Clive Thompson
#2. I also follow chess on the Internet, where Kasparov's site is very interesting.
Boris Spassky
#3. I honestly don't read that much. Obviously I read chess books - in terms of favorites, Kasparov's 'My Great Predecessors' is pretty good.
Magnus Carlsen
#4. If, in our first match for the world champion's title, I had managed to make the score 6-0, there would have been no Kasparov as a good chess player at all.
Anatoly Karpov
#5. The West can't come up with anything to deal with Moscow, except appeasement.
Garry Kasparov
#6. Moscow is simply unwilling to recognize the right of self-determination of nations.
Garry Kasparov
#7. [Harry] Kasparov and [Anatoly] Karpov have something in common. They both want to become deputies of the Russian State Duma.
Viktor Korchnoi
#8. Millions like me in Russia want a free press, the rule of law, social justice, and free and fair elections. My new job is to fight for those people and to fight for these fundamental rights.
Garry Kasparov
#9. When your house is on fire, you cant be bothered with the neighbors. Or, as we say in Chess, if your King is under attack you don't worry about losing a Pawn on the Queen's side
Garry Kasparov
#11. If you're already in a fight, you want the first blow to be the last and you had better be the one to throw it.
Garry Kasparov
#12. By strictly observing Botvinnik's rule regarding the thorough analysis of one's own games, with the years I have come to realize that this provides the foundation for the continuous development of chess mastery.
Garry Kasparov
#13. Though I would have liked my chances in a rematch in 1998 if I were better prepared, it was clear then that computer superiority over humans in chess had always been just a matter of time.
Garry Kasparov
#14. Women, by their nature, are not exceptional chess players: they are not great fighters.
Garry Kasparov
#15. Putin recognized that if he could get enough money, everything would be under control.
Garry Kasparov
#16. In conclusion, if you want to unravel the multitude of secrets of chess then don't begrudge the time.
Garry Kasparov
#17. I have great energy and I have great tasks ahead of me.
Garry Kasparov
#18. His teaching became a turning point in chess history: it was from Steinitz that the era of modern chess began. The contribution of the first world champion to its development is comparable with the great scientific discoveries of the 19th century.
Garry Kasparov
#19. The public must come to see that chess is a violent sport. Chess is mental torture.
Garry Kasparov
#20. It's true that in chess as in politics, fund-raising and glad-handing matter.
Garry Kasparov
#21. At some point he seemed to lose all confidence trying to break down the Berlin Wall. He was still fighting as only Kasparov can, but I could see it in his eyes that he knew he wasn't going to win one of these games.
Vladimir Kramnik
#22. I'm not saying that George W. Bush did everything right. But even if you take a skeptical view of his Iraq war, [Barack] Obama made the more serious error of withdrawing his troops from Iraq early.
Garry Kasparov
#23. If your opponent has an exposed king it is frequently worth sacrificing a pawn to be able to bring your rooks into the game, especially if your opponent's rooks are languishing in the corner. Kasparov has made a career out of such sacrifices.
Neil McDonald
#24. Of course, if people do not want to do any work then it is better to start the game from a random position.
Garry Kasparov
#26. Chess continues to advance over time, so the players of the future will inevitably surpass me in the quality of their play, assuming the rules and regulations allow them to play serious chess. But it will likely be a long time before anyone spends 20 consecutive years as number, one as I did.
Garry Kasparov
#27. I may play some exhibition games so I don't want to quit the game of chess completely. I just decided and it's a firm decision not to play competitive chess anymore.
Garry Kasparov
#28. I think that it's a vital moment now for Russian democracy to convince people that it's only our actions, our joined actions and protests that could force Kremlin to reconsider its plans to abolish presidential elections.
Garry Kasparov
#29. Kortchnoi's heritage is many-faceted - over the decades he has several times corrected and changed his style. But the main thing has invariably remained his search for chess truth.
Garry Kasparov
#30. I dropped the King's Indian in 1997 after one too many bad experiences against Kramnik.
Garry Kasparov
#32. There are many facts showing that Putin's people enriched themselves by using power mechanisms so that's why for them losing power means losing their fortunes.
Garry Kasparov
#33. Somehow, people always forget that it's much easier to install a dictator than to remove one
Garry Kasparov
#34. Vladimir Putin uses fascist propaganda to do so. From Ukraine to Syria, he is behaving like the world's new general and celebrating victories, while the American president sits on the sidelines and Europe sleeps. The West's behavior toward Putin is political and moral capitulation.
Garry Kasparov
#35. A moral foreign policy means your positions on certain matters are clear no matter what, and that you won't forget about them when it's convenient.
Garry Kasparov
#36. Things are currently the other way around in [Vladimir] Putin's realm. But it won't stay that way forever.
Garry Kasparov
#37. The Nanjing games are homework by Garry Kasparov and me, [ ... ] Today's game was provided by Garry.
Magnus Carlsen
#38. Results show that just one year of chess tuition will improve a student's learning abilities, concentration, application, sense of logic, self-discipline, respect, behavior and the ability to take responsibility for his/her own actions.
Garry Kasparov
#39. For me, chess is a language, and if it's not my native tongue, it is one I learned via the immersion method at a young age.
Garry Kasparov
#40. It was not about losing my mental power; it's about not feeling good about my contribution to the game.
Garry Kasparov
#41. When I was preparing for one term's work in the Botvinnik school I had to spend a lot of time on king and pawn endings. So when I came to a tricky position in my own games I knew the winning method.
Garry Kasparov
#42. Revenge for a terror attack is ideal for Putin's model. His propaganda machine will be filled with scenes of crash victims if [Vladimir] Putin sees the need for a larger war to stoke his domestic support again as the Russian economy teeters.
Garry Kasparov
#43. I studied that first Karpov-Kasparov match for a year and a half before I cracked it, what they were doing, and discovered that it was all prearranged move-by-move. There's no doubt of it in my mind.
Bobby Fischer
#44. Vladimir Putin mainly has friends in Europe among the extreme right, such as Marine Le Pen's Front National in France.
Garry Kasparov
#45. I just think we should look at this as a chess match," he said, "between the world's greatest chess player and Garry Kasparov.
Lou Gerstner
#46. There can be no finer example of the inspiring powers of competition to shatter the status quo than Hungary's Judit Polgar.
Garry Kasparov
#47. Anatoly Karpov, his by-the-book opponent, was too conservative to pressure Kasparov early in the game, so Kasparov put the pressure on himself with a Queen's Gambit - and won.
Christopher McDougall
#48. Russia was allowed to inherit the Soviet Union's seat on the UN Security Council when that organization, which had been designed to preserve the Cold War status quo, should instead have been reformed to reflect the new primacy of the free world.
Garry Kasparov
#49. I think Russian people are learning that democracy is not an alien thing; it's not a western invention.
Garry Kasparov
#50. Tarrasch's 'dogmas' are not eternal truisms, but merely instructional material presented in an accessible and witty form, those necessary rudiments from which one can begin to grasp the secrets of chess ...
Garry Kasparov
#51. It's quite difficult for me to imagine my life without chess.
Garry Kasparov
#52. Few things are as psychologically brutal as chess.
Garry Kasparov
#53. Solving new problems is what keeps us moving forward as individuals and as a society, so don't back down.
Garry Kasparov
#54. One of the strengths, and weaknesses, of liberal democratic societies is giving the benefit of the doubt even to one's enemies
Garry Kasparov
#55. Attackers may sometimes regret bad moves, but it is much worse to forever regret an opportunity you allowed to pass you by.
Garry Kasparov
#56. This obligation to move can be a burden to a player without strategic vision.
Garry Kasparov
#57. I don't really like discussions about a supposed Russian national character.
Garry Kasparov
#58. Chess helps you to concentrate, improve your logic. It teaches you to play by the rules and take responsibility for your actions, how to problem solve in an uncertain environment.
Garry Kasparov
#59. Unlike my esteemed colleague Garry Kasparov, I don't restrict the strength of opposition to Elo <2000, as fly-swatting makes poor spectator sport. (on simultaneous exhibitions)
Nigel Short
#60. I would like to travel to my country again, to a country without a dictatorship, to a post-Putin Russia.
Garry Kasparov
#61. To my surprise I found that when other top players in the precomputer age (before 1995, roughly) wrote about games in magazines and newspaper columns, they often made more mistakes in their annotations than the players had made at the board.
Garry Kasparov
#62. Telling Ukrainians they provoked Putin by rejecting him and moving toward Europe is like telling a harassed woman she should wear longer skirts. Do not lose sight of who is the offender and who is the victim!
Garry Kasparov
#63. When Garri Kasparov wrestles with his conscience, he always wins. It's what he's best at.
Dominic Lawson
#64. The point of modern propaganda isn't only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.
Garry Kasparov
#65. Chess is far too complex to be definitively solved with any technology we can conceive of today. However, our looked-down-upon cousin, checkers, or draughts, suffered this fate quite recently thanks to the work of Jonathan Schaeffer at the University of Alberta and his unbeatable program Chinook.
Garry Kasparov
#66. It was an impressive achievement, of course, and a human achievement by the members of the IBM team, but Deep Blue was only intelligent the way your programmable alarm clock is intelligent. Not that losing to a $10 million alarm clock made me feel any better.
Garry Kasparov
#67. It's not enough to be talented. It's not enough to work hard and to study late into the night. You must also become intimately aware of the methods you use to reach your decisions.
Garry Kasparov
#69. One of the things that first attracted me to chess is that it brings you into contact with intelligent, civilized people - men of the stature of Garry Kasparov, the former world champion, who was my part-time coach.
Magnus Carlsen
#70. Chess is one of the few arts where composition takes place simultaneously with performance
Garry Kasparov
#71. Typically, however, the winner is just the player who made the next-to-last mistake.
Garry Kasparov
#72. My love of dynamic complications often led me to avoid simplicity when perhaps it was the wisest choice.
Garry Kasparov
#73. To become good at anything you have to know how to apply basic principles. To become great at it, you have to know when to violate those principles.
Garry Kasparov
#75. Nervous energy is the ammunition we take into any mental battle. If you don't have enough of it, your concentration will fade. If you have a surplus, the results will explode.
Garry Kasparov
#76. In chess, we have styles - like in any other field. There are also fashions in the kinds of systems that people play. So I'm trying to know my opponent as much as possible.
Garry Kasparov
#77. Capablanca possessed an amazing ability to quickly see into a position and intuitively grasp its main features. His style, one of the purest, most crystal-clear in the entire history of chess, astonishes one with his logic.
Garry Kasparov
#78. Caissa, the goddess of chess, had punished me for my conservative play, for betraying my nature.
Garry Kasparov
#79. This is the essential element that cannot be measured by any analysis or device, and I believe it's at the heart of success in all things: the power of intuition and the ability to harness and use it like a master.
Garry Kasparov
#80. I'm looking forward to the day when my country is saved - and the current winner becomes a loser.
Garry Kasparov
#81. Look at Garry Kasparov. After he loses, invariably he wins the next game. He just kills the next guy. That's something that we have to learn to be able to do
Maurice Ashley
#82. The Russian Dept of Tourism has declared Ukraine its most dangerous destination. Many Russian tourists have disappeared there.
Garry Kasparov
#83. Do as little as necessary to appear to be doing something without actually committing to a cause or course of action.
Garry Kasparov
#84. Excelling at chess has long been considered a symbol of more general intelligence. That is an incorrect assumption in my view, as pleasant as it might be.
Garry Kasparov
#85. I was going to do a book about the first prearranged Karpov-Kasparov match, '84-'85. But the God-damn Jews have stolen my entire file on that.
Bobby Fischer
#86. A brilliant strategy is, certainly, a matter of intelligence, but intelligence without audaciousness is not enough.
Garry Kasparov
#87. Ironically, the main task of chess software companies today is to find ways to make the program weaker, not stronger, and to provide enough options that any user can pick from different levels and the machine will try to make enough mistakes to give him a chance.
Garry Kasparov
#88. In chess the rules are fixed and the outcome is unpredictable, whereas in Putin's Russia the rules are unpredictable and the outcome is fixed.
Garry Kasparov
#89. I'm still number one and I just recently won a major tournament ahead of my toughest rivals so I think I had a few years ahead of me if I decided to stay.
Garry Kasparov
#90. We have to always look ahead enough moves to be well prepared, even for victory!
Garry Kasparov
#91. The Western rhetoric of appeasement creates a self-reinforcing loop of mental and moral corruption. Speaking the truth now would mean confessing to many months of lies
Garry Kasparov
#92. I wouldn't overestimate the importance of my popularity in the country and abroad but at the end of the day it's not as important because I believe that my presence here could make some difference and it could encourage people.
Garry Kasparov
#93. The Putin regime is and always has been about one thing: money. Specifically, about how to move it into the bank accounts of Putin's
Garry Kasparov
#94. Thanks to the Polgars the adjective 'men's' before events and the 'affirmative action' women's titles such as Woman Grandmaster have become anachronisms.
Garry Kasparov
#95. The regime is in trouble economically and can no longer offer anything to its citizens. That's why [Vladimir] Putin has to pursue an aggressive foreign policy, so he can serve his people the fairy tale of Russian pride and regaining its strength as a major power.
Garry Kasparov
#96. Any experienced player knows how a change in the character of the play influences your psychological mood.
Garry Kasparov
#97. History does not end; it runs in cycles. The failure to defend Ukraine today is the failure of the Allies to defend Czechoslovakia in 1938. The world must act now so that Poland in 2015 will not be called on to play the role of Poland in 1939.
Garry Kasparov
#98. Nowadays games immediately appear on the Internet and thus the life of novelties is measured in hours. Modern professionals do not have the right to be forgetful - it is 'life threatening'.
Garry Kasparov
#99. I now have Croatian citizenship, but I only accepted it because Croatia allowed me to keep my Russian passport.
Garry Kasparov
#100. [Vladimir] Putin needs wars to legitimize his position.
Garry Kasparov
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