Viktor Korchnoi Quotes

#1. Those who think that it is easy to play chess are mistaken. During a game a player lives on his nerves, and at the same time he must be perfectly composed.

Viktor Korchnoi

#2. Am I always in contact with Reality, or do I only pray when things have gone wrong, when there is a disturbance in the moments of my life?

Oswald Chambers

#3. Chess you don't learn, chess you understand.

Viktor Korchnoi

#4. The whole life with a wife is like an end game with two bishops of different colors.

Viktor Korchnoi

#5. A true friend is a sort of second self.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

#6. It is a gross overstatement, but in chess, it can be said I play against my opponent over the board and against myself on the clock.

Viktor Korchnoi

#7. Sometimes I even say that I have surpassed Lasker in using psychology. How? Well, sometimes I use psychology with a portion of risk. That is something else, something that Lasker wouldn't allow.

Viktor Korchnoi

#8. But doesn't love cause too much pain?" she said. "To be worth it?" "It causes pain, indeed," Grumpy said. "But it's worth it. It's a good pain.

Odette Beane

#9. Set all things in their own peculiar place, and know that order is the greatest grace.

John Dryden

#10. Man is God's highest present development. He is the latest thing in God.

Samuel Butler

#11. All obvious moves look dubious in analysis after the game.

Viktor Korchnoi

#12. Bring on all the pretenders!

Taylor Swift

#13. I don't study; I create.

Viktor Korchnoi

#14. You should start your life with the illusion that you are completely in control of what you do. You should finish life with the recognition that, all in all, you got better than you deserved.

David Brooks

#15. The only positive contribution to chess from Fischer in the last 20 years.

Viktor Korchnoi

#16. As a rule, the more mistakes there are in a game, the more memorable it remains, because you have suffered and worried over each mistake at the board.

Viktor Korchnoi

#17. [Harry] Kasparov and [Anatoly] Karpov have something in common. They both want to become deputies of the Russian State Duma.

Viktor Korchnoi

#18. The human element, the human flaw and the human nobility - those are the reasons that chess matches are won or lost.

Viktor Korchnoi

#19. Skeletons of mice are often to be found in coconuts, for it is easier to get in, slim and greedy, than to get out, appeased but fat.

Viktor Korchnoi

#20. Love. Comfort. I didn't know what those were, but I wanted them. I would have them. I closed the distance and snapped the man's neck.
As the third corpse dropped to the floor at my feet, the Matriarch smiled.

S.J. Kincaid

#21. It is unpleasant for the players, when the organizers arrange for play to take place in the morning. The games from such last rounds, in view of the large number of mistakes, are not fit for publication!

Viktor Korchnoi

#22. Every time I win a tournament I have to think that there is something wrong with modern chess.

Viktor Korchnoi

#23. The aim was simple: to deprive Karpov of his favourite occupation - standing at the board, staring straight at his opponent. While I was wearing these glasses, all he could admire was his own reflection.

Viktor Korchnoi

#24. Whatever makes a man a beast also renders him pitiable. But it behoves us to be wary of these bestial men despite our compassion, for they frequently turn on their friends.

Maria McCann

#25. No Chess Grandmaster is normal; they only differ in the extent of their madness

Viktor Korchnoi

#26. The kingdom of God, which Jesus came to inaugurate, is meant to create an alternate reality in this world, and ultimately to transform the kingdoms of this world.

Jim Wallis