Top 77 Fischer Quotes & Sayings

What was great about Fischer is that when he became world champion is that chess was being covered everywhere. It was in all the major newspapers, it was on TV.

With or without the title, Bobby Fischer was unquestionably the greatest player of his time

My God, Bobby Fischer plays so simply

Fischer Chess play was always razor-sharp, rational and brilliant. One of the best ever

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

Joschka Fischer was a Green Party politician and Germany's foreign minister. We hired Mr. Fischer, as well as former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, as advisors because we, as an automaker, want to know, for example, how new emissions laws will develop in the United States, Europe and Asia. Fischer and Ms. Albright have diverse contacts worldwide. They can call our attention to trends early on, information from which we can benefit.

By this measure (on the gap between Fischer & his contemporaries), I consider him the greatest world champion

Spassky will not be psyched out by Fischer

Many Chess players were surprised when after the game, Fischer quietly explained: 'I had already analyzed this possibility' in a position which I thought was not possible to foresee from the opening

Bobby Fischer's current state of mind is indeed a tragedy. One of the worlds greatest Chess players - the pride and sorrow of American Chess

If you're bumming out, you're not gonna get to the top, so as long as we're up here we might as well make a point of grooving. (Quoting Scott Fischer)

Is Bobby Fischer quite sane?

Fischer, who may or may not be mad as a hatter, has every right to be horrified

This whole fuss did not only damage Fischer's image, but that of the USA as well. The way the Americans treated one of their most popular citizens did not make a positive impression worldwide.

Nowadays, a 13-year-old would probably know more than Bobby Fischer knew when he retired. They analyse all the moves and prepare themselves on their computers. But that doesn’t mean they are special.

Fischer wanted to give the Russians a taste of their own medicine

Bobby Fischer has an enormous knowledge of chess and his familiarity with the chess literature of the USSR is immense.

I'm definitely the first no.1 in the world since Fischer, and probably at least since Kasparov, who probably has the most potential to dominate for the foreseeable future.

Do you realize Fischer almost never has any bad pieces? He exchanges them, and the bad pieces remain with his opponents

Bobby Fischer is the greatest Chess genius of all time!

How do you beat Bobby Fischer? You play him at any game but chess. I try to stay in games where I have an edge.

Like everyone, I was a kid who played chess when I was young. And I am admittedly old enough to have been around during the fervor of the match in Reykjavik and the rise of Bobby Fischer, so those two things conspired to pique my interest.

I still hope to kill Fischer

We, the Greens, should thank our former foreign minister Joschka Fischer for bringing something hideous and shameful to light - that Nazi ideas were fully adopted by white-collar workers in the Foreign Ministry. Joschka Fischer stood up to criticism that he would foul his own nest, and with his order to start the historical commission he made it clear that the ministry's pride in itself, as a haven of resistance to Hitler, was no longer acceptable.

Fischer is Fischer, but a knight is a knight!

I like to say that Bobby Fischer was the greatest player ever. But what made Fischer a genius was his ability to blend an American freshness and pragmatism with Russian ideas about strategy

I met Bobby Fischer in 1993 when he moved to Europe. I have mixed feelings about it. He was an idol, but not a healthy minded man.

Fischer is an American Chess tragedy on par with Morphy and Pillsbury

Fischer prefers to enter Chess history alone

You know you're going to lose. Even when I was ahead I knew I was going to lose -on playing against Fischer

In complicated positions, Bobby Fischer hardly had to be afraid of anybody

I think the combination of genius and celebrity, in the case of Bobby Fischer, was a dangerous cocktail.

The Beatles in 1963 came to America and became international celebrities, but Bobby Fischer was one of the first, as Elvis was, more in terms of the message created around him.

It is difficult to play against Einstein's theory -on his first loss to Fischer

I see my own style as being a symbiosis of the styles of Alekhine, Tal and Fischer.

Fischer, the great American chess champion, famously said, 'Chess is life.' I would say, 'Pi is life.'

When I asked Fischer why he had not played a certain move in our game, he replied: 'Well, you laughed when I wrote it down!'

When I was 15, I became the youngest grandmaster in the world, breaking the record set by Bobby Fischer more than three decades earlier.

While it is a cause for regret that Fischer did not continue to produce scintillating games, he perhaps had a greater impact on chess than any other twentieth century player

Fischer was a master of clarity and a king of artful positioning. His opponents would see where he was going but were powerless to stop him

What is chess, do you think? Those who play for fun or not at all dismiss it as a game. The ones who devote their lives to it for the most part insist that it's a science. It's neither. Bobby Fischer got underneath it like no one before and found at its center, art.

You want to know what I want? I'll tell you what I want. I want back what Bobby Fischer took with him when he disappeared.

Bobby Fischer was hugely important for the American chess community because it put chess on the map - he made it possible for other chess players to make a living.

Being a friend of Fischer obviously is no undivided pleasure, though being Fischer seems sadder.

There were certainly those who rubbed their eyes in astonishment. But when we held a company discussion forum with Joschka Fischer, interest was high. Six hundred senior managers came to the meeting. In the end, there was tremendous applause for Fischer, because he offered a precise analysis of the challenges our industry faces worldwide.

When Grand Masters play, they see the logic of their opponent's moves. One's moves may be so powerful that the other may not be able to stop him, but the plan behind the moves will be clear. Not so with Fischer. His moves did not make sense - at least to all the rest of us they didn't. We were playing chess, Fischer was playing something else, call it what you will. Naturally, there would come a time when we finally would understand what those moves had been about. But by then it was too late. We were dead.

Play out a boring game to the end and funny things can happen; Fischer knew it.

Suddenly it was obvious to me in my analysis I had missed what Fischer had found with the greatest of ease at the board

I started chess around the age of seven. I was inspired by the game, but soon legends like Kasparov, Karpov, Fischer, Anand and many other world champions captivated me.

Fischer is the greatest genius to descend from the chess heavens.

What I admired most about him [Bobby Fischer] was his ability to make what was in fact so difficult look easy to us. I try to emulate him.

In general there is something puzzling about the fact that the most renowned figures in chess - Morphy, Pillsbury, Capablanca and Fischer - were born in America.

The Soviet Union was an exception, but even there chess players were not rich. Only Fischer changed that.

In Fischer's hands, a slight theoretical advantage is as good a being a Queen ahead

Fischer does not merely outplay opponents; he leaves them bodily and mentally glutted. Fisher himself speaks of the exultant instant in which he feels the 'ego of the other player crumbling.'

As with Steinitz, Fischer's genius has often been concealed by controversies away from the board. Like Lasker, Fischer has raised chess to new financial heights despite frequent retreats from serious play. And, like Capablanca, Fischer is recognized by millions of non-players and has won the game many new enthusiasts.

Robert Fischer is a law unto himself

I am not sure the others are as committed as Rob Hall and Scott Fischer. I think there is more business now, and I know it will be impossible to stop this Everest business.

There is only one thing Fischer does in Chess without pleasure: to lose!

It was clear to me that the vulnerable point of the American Grandmaster (Bobby Fischer) was in double-edged, hanging, irrational positions, where he often failed to find a win even in a won position