Top 147 Quotes & Sayings by Bobby Fischer - Page 2

I really love the dark of the night. It helps me to concentrate.

There are tough players and nice guys, and I'm a tough player

Nothing eases suffering like human touch.

That's what Chess is all about. One day you give your opponent a lesson, the next day he gives you one

Concentrate on material gains. Whatever your opponent gives you take, unless you see a good reason not to.

I play honestly and I play to win. If I lose, I take my medicine.

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.

Don't even mention losing to me. I can't stand to think of it

Vacations are designed to refresh the outlook of everyone. No matter how tired they may be when they return to work, vacationers have been refreshed emotionally and intellectually. Their effectiveness in their job has probably improved, and they are, generally speaking, better employees for the time off.

If you don't win, it's not a great tragedy - the worst that happens is that you lose a game.

I'm not as soft or as generous a person as I would be if the world hadn't changed me.

Is it against the law to kill a reporter?

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.

I prepare myself well. I know what I can do before I go in. I'm always confident.

I read a book lately by Nietzsche and he says religion is just to dull the senses of the people. I agree.

She and I just don't see eye to eye together. She's a square. She keeps telling me that I'm too interested in chess, that I should get friends outside of chess, you can't make a living from chess, that I should finish high school and all that nonsense. She keeps in my hair and I don't like people in my hair, you know, so I had to get rid of her.

Blitz chess kills your ideas.

Patzer sees a check, gives a check.

It's the fault of the chess players themselves. I don't know what they used to be, but now they're not the most gentlemanly group. When it was a game played by the aristocrats it had more like you know dignity to it. When they used to have the clubs, like no women were allowed and everybody went in dressed in a suit, a tie, like gentlemen, you know. Now, kids come running in their sneakers. Even in the best chess club-and they got women in there. It's a social place and people are making noise, it's a madhouse.

When I used to go to the Manhattan Chess Club back in the fifties, I met a lot of old-timers there who knew Capablanca, because he used to come around to the Manhattan club in the forties - before he died in the early forties. They spoke about Capablanca with awe. I have never seen people speak about any chess player like that, before or since.

To get squares you have to give up squares.

In chess so much depends on opening theory, so the champions before the last century did not know as much as I do and other players do about opening theory. So if you just brought them back from the dead they wouldn't do well. They'd get bad openings.

He is the so-called father of the modern school of chess; before him, the King was considered a weak piece and players set out to attack the King directly. Steinitz claimed that the King was well able to take care of itself, and ought not to be attacked until one had some other positional advantage. He understood more about the use of squares than Morphy and contributed a great deal more to chess theory.

Every chess game is like taking a five-hour final exam.

Its just you and your opponent at the board and you're trying to prove something

Chess demands total concentration

Morphy was probably the greatest genius of them all

I don't like to dwell on the past. I'm interested in Fischerandom now, I am working on a new clock, I'm trying to make chess a more exciting game today. I am not interested in sitting in my rocking chair thinking what I did 10, 20 or 30 years ago.

Nobody has single-handedly done more for the US image than me...

Alekhine developed as a player much more slowly than most. In his twenties, he was an atrocious chessplayer, and didn't mature until he was well into his thirties.

If I win a tournament, I win it by myself. I do the playing. Nobody helps me

Our mind is all we've got. Not that it won't lead us astray sometimes, but we still have to analyze things out within ourselves.

I am the best player in the world, and I am here to prove it.

When I was eleven, I just got good.

There's no luck involved in chess. You just have to work at it.

The old chess is too limited. Imagine playing cards, black jack for example, and every time the dealer has the same starting hand you have the same starting hand. What's the point?

I have never opened with the QP - on principle.

It is time to finish off the U.S. once and for all.

The system set up by F.I.D.E. ... Insures that there will always be a Russian world champion... The Russians arranged it that way.

In my opinion, the King's Gambit is busted. It loses by force.

Sometimes girls write me. One girl in Yugoslavia sent me a whole slew of love letters. I don't know how she got my address. She was in a crowd watching me play. She says when I left there the stars fell out of the sky over Yugoslavia, or something like that.

Well, I kind of split my life into two pieces. One was where my chess career lies. There, I kept my sanity, so to speak, and my logic. And the other was my religious life. I tried to apply what I learned in the church to my chess career too. But I still was studying chess. I wasn't just "trusting in God" to give me the moves.

I grew up with the concept of freedom of speech. So I'm too old, it's too late for me to adjust to the new world, the new world order.

Genius. It's a word. What does it really mean? If I win I'm a genius. If I don't, I'm not.

My opponents make good moves too. Sometimes I don't take these things into consideration

But the thing that was great about Capablanca was that he really spoke his mind, he said what he believed was true, he said what he felt. He [Capablanca] wanted to change the rules [of chess] already, back in the twenties, because he said chess was getting played out. He was right. Now chess is completely dead. It is all just memorisation and prearrangement. It's a terrible game now. Very uncreative.

All my games are real

Well, you know, in America everybody is interested in making the dollar fast. In Yugoslavia no matter how much you hustle you're not going to get rich, so you might as well play chess.

I usually never stay at the board after a game. Especially against Spassky. I made a dumb suggestion and he refuted it instantly! I know I'm going to have to play him some day and it was really stupid to look like such a jerk in front of him.

I add status to any tournament I attend.

As Olafsson showed me, White can win... It's hard to believe. I stayed up all night analysing, finally convicing myself, and, incidentally, learning a lot about Rook and Pawn endings in the process.

Tactics flow from a superior position

I think it's almost definite that the game is a draw theoretically.

You know I'm finished with the old chess because it's all just a lot of book and memorization you know.

You have to have the fighting spirit. You have to force moves and take chances

I can remember times coming home from a chess club at four in the morning when I was half asleep and half dead and forcing myself to pray an hour and study an hour. You know, I was half out of my mind-stoned almost.

I love the game - and I hate the Russians because they've almost ruined it. They only risk the title when they have to, every three years. They play for draws with each other but play to win against the Western masters. Draws make for dull chess, wins make for fighting chess.

For the first lesson, I want you to play over every column of Modern Chess Openings, including the footnotes. And for the next lesson, I want you to do it again.

There's no one alive I can't beat.

Computers are our only opponents that don't always have no excuse when losing against me.