A Quote by Benjamin Franklin

The game of Chess is not merely an idle amusement; several very valuable qualities of the mind are to be acquired and strengthened by it, so as to become habits ready on all occasions, for life is a kind of chess.

Benjamin Franklin

Quote Topics

Acquired All Occasions Amusement Become Chess Game Habits Idle Kind Life Life Is Life Is A Merely Mind Occasions Qualities Ready Several Valuable Very

Quote Author

Benjamin Franklin
American - Politician
January 17, 1706 - April 17, 1790

Like Dvoretsky, I think that (all other things being equal), the analytical method of studying chess must give you a colossal advantage over the chess pragmatist, and that there can be no certainty in chess without analysis. I personally acquired these views from my sessions with Mikhail Botvinnik, and they laid the foundations of my chess-playing life.

Garry Kasparov

Chess is a very tough game, and psychologically a tough game. And of course, chess needs a lot of qualities, human qualities. And so you must have a very strong nervous system, and then you must be well prepared; you must be able to work a lot.

Anatoly Karpov

Chess is a very tough game, and psychologically a tough game. And of course chess needs a lot of qualities, human qualities. And so you must have very strong nervous system and then you must be well prepared, you must be able to work a lot.

Anatoly Karpov

I started playing chess when I was about 4 or 5 years old. It is very good for children to learn to play chess, because it helps them to develop their mental abilities. It also helps to consolidate a person's character, because as it happens both in life and in a chess game we have to make decisions constantly. In chess there is no luck and no excuses: everything is in your hands.

Vladimir Kramnik

I love chess, and I didn't invent Fischerandom chess to destroy chess. I invented Fischerandom chess to keep chess going. Because I consider the old chess is dying, it really is dead. A lot of people have come up with other rules of chess-type games, with 10x8 boards, new pieces, and all kinds of things. I'm really not interested in that. I want to keep the old chess flavor. I want to keep the old chess game. But just making a change so the starting positions are mixed, so it's not degenerated down to memorisation and prearrangement like it is today.

Bobby Fischer

Chess - it's a nonmainstream game. And the irony is that when you look at Hollywood, it kept using chess as the symbol of intelligence for its heroes, for its top characters, all the time. So it's from "Casablanca" to "Harry Potter." You always have chess as a very important element to demonstrate intelligence, while in normal life people think it's just a weird intelligence - like AI.

Garry Kasparov

My parents were very supportive of my chess. When I got home after a game of chess, having missed school or something, they always made me feel very welcome; I didn't feel guilty at all about pursuing chess with such fervour. They never, for instance, perceived sports as a rival to academics.

Viswanathan Anand

Playing rapid chess, one can lose the habit of concentrating for several hours in serious chess. That is why, if a player has big aims, he should limit his rapidplay in favour of serious chess.

Vladimir Kramnik

I used to play a lot of chess and competitive chess and study chess and as you get to the grandmasters and learn their styles when you start copying their games like the way they express themselves through... The way Kasparov or Bobby Fischer expresses themselves through a game of chess is it's astonishing. You can show a chess master one of their games and they'll say "Yeah, that is done by that player."

Rainn Wilson

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.

Bobby Fischer

I ... have two vocations: chess and engineering. If I played chess only, I believe that my success would not have been significantly greater. I can play chess well only when I have fully convalesced from chess and when the 'hunger for chess' once more awakens within me.

Mikhail Botvinnik

I was very competitive growing up. I can't even play chess anymore because I used to play tournament chess in school. There's too much sense memory of sitting in front of a chess board and getting super intense about it. It's ruined the game for me.

Chris Hardwick

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.

Bobby Fischer

I was very lucky that while I was a chess player in a country where chess was not a big deal, I happened to be in the one city where there was a sprouting chess team: Chennai.

Viswanathan Anand

Chess is more than a game or a mental training. It is a distinct attainment. I have always regarded the playing of chess and the accomplishment of a good game as an art, and something to be admired no less than an artist's canvas or the product of a sculptor's chisel. Chess is a mental diversion rather than a game. It is both artistic and scientific.