Playing Chess Quotes - Page 3

• Ralph... would treat the day's decisions as though he were playing chess. The only trouble was that he would never be a very good chess player.

  William Golding

  Player, Decision, Trouble

  William Golding (2016). “Lord of the Flies: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.89, Penguin

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Work, as we usually think of it, is energy expended for a further end in view; play is energy expended for its own sake, as with children's play, or as manifestation of the end or goal of work, as in "playing" chess or the piano. Play in this sense, then, is the fulfillment of work, the exhibition of what the work has been done for.

  Northrop Frye

  Children, Work, Thinking

  Northrop Frye, Alvin A. Lee (2006). “The Great Code: The Bible and Literature”, p.145, University of Toronto Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• [Some of the people I'd met] were wonderful people as human beings, and some people were more difficult. I could not see a correlation between their particular genius in playing chess and music and mathematics, etc. ... with human qualities. Some were really good, wonderful people, and some were difficult characters, but there was no clear correlation. But when I met some spiritual masters, [I thought that] there had to be a correlation, and it turned out to be true.

  Matthieu Ricard

  Spiritual, Character, People

  Source: www.takingcharge.csh.umn.edu

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• The passion for playing chess is one of the most unaccountable in the world. It slaps the theory of natural selection in the face. It is the most absorbing of occupations. The least satisfying of desires. A nameless excrescence upon life. It annihilates a man. You have, let us say, a promising politician, a rising artist that you wish to destroy. Dagger or bomb are archaic and unreliable - but teach him, inoculate him with chess.

  H. G. Wells

  Passion, Artist, Men

  14 Copy quote

• Playing chess is more athletic than artistic. Champions are more concerned with victory than beauty: it's war with occasionally graceful kicks.

  Jennifer Shahade

  War, Athletic, Champion

  8 Copy quote

• I spend hours playing chess because I find it so much fun. The day it stops being fun is the day I give up.

  Magnus Carlsen

  Giving Up, Fun, Hours

  26 Copy quote

• One minute I was playing chess and doing maths all the time, the next I had been rerouted into more 'normal' girls' activities: reading, writing stories and worrying about my clothes.

  Scarlett Thomas

  Girl, Reading, Writing

  4 Copy quote

• I feel like I'm playing chess underwater. The pieces keep floating away. I don't know where things are. I can't figure out tomorrow.

  Jerry Spinelli

  Underwater, Floating, Pieces

  7 Copy quote

• Riding a bike works your legs but not your brain. Playing chess works your mind but not your body. Climbing brings it all together.

  Pat Ament

  Climbing, Brain, Mind

  4 Copy quote

• I would certainly end up forever crying the blues into a coffee cup in a park for old men playing chess or silly games of some sort.

  Charles Bukowski

  Coffee, Silly, Men

  8 Copy quote

• The captain was a good chess player, and the games were always interesting. Yossarian had stopped playing chess with him because the games were so interesting they were foolish.

  Joseph Heller

  Player, Games, Interesting

  Joseph Heller (1999). “Catch-22: A Novel”, p.19, Simon and Schuster

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• It's not that the Democrats are playing checkers and the Republicans are playing chess. It's that the Republicans are playing chess and the Democrats are in the nurse's office because once again they glued their balls to their thighs.

  Jon Stewart

  Nurse, Office, Balls

  "Jon Stewart Gets Fed Up: Dems Set The Bar So Low They’re Tripping Over It" by Dan Abramson, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 21, 2010.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• We've seen computers play chess and beat grand masters. We've seen computers drive a car across a desert. But interestingly, playing chess is easy, but having a conversation about nothing is really difficult for a computer.

  Hod Lipson

  Play, Car, Desert

  "Robot-To-Robot Chat Yields Curious Conversation". "All Things Considered" with Robert Siegel, www.npr.org. September 1, 2011.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Firstly, there no such person as Death.
  Second, Death's this tall guy with a bone face, like a skeletal monk, with a scythe and an hourglass and a big white horse and a penchant for playing chess with Scandinavians.
  Third, he doesn't exist either.

  Neil Gaiman

  Death, Horse, White

  23 Copy quote

• It's hard to explain what happens when jazz and punk fuse with a violin twist but it works. Probably because Anson Choi takes off his shirt while he's playing the saxophone. Whoever's not chatting up a Cadet or a girl from Darling House or playing chess with the guys is watching the band. I turn into a groupie.

  Melina Marchetta

  Girl, House, Guy

  4 Copy quote

• Two monks sit facing, playing chess on the mountain, The bamboo shadow on the board is dark and clear. Not a person sees the bamboo's shadow, One sometimes hears the pieces being moved.

  Bai Juyi

  Autumn, Dark, Winter

  Bai Juyi, “On The Lake (1)”

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• When I started out playing chess as a kid I thought I should be world champion. As a kid you have no idea what that means and you only sort of picture it. It is hard to imagine that I waited all those years and it happened in a late stage of my career.

  Viswanathan Anand

  Mean, Kids, Years

  "Devil's Advocate: Viswanathan Anand on mind games". CNN-IBN interview, en.chessbase.com. May 13, 2008.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• But it's also because of something personal. My mother and father met while playing chess, so I've always had a fondness for the game. If it weren't for chess, I might not be here.

  Dorothy Dunnett

  Mother, Father, Games

  8 Copy quote

• The physicist is like someone who's watching people playing chess and, after watching a few games, he may have worked out what the moves in the game are. But understanding the rules is just a trivial preliminary on the long route from being a novice to being a grand master. So even if we understand all the laws of physics, then exploring their consequences in the everyday world where complex structures can exist is a far more daunting task, and that's an inexhaustible one I'm sure.

  Martin Rees

  Moving, Science, Law

  11 Copy quote

• When I was a kid, I really liked playing chess, which is pretty geeky; I just enjoyed it - thinking, exercising my mind. And I found computers to be like an eight-hour day chess game.

  Michael Birch

  Kids, Exercise, Thinking

  4 Copy quote

• The Kremlin is constantly changing the rules of the game to suit its purposes. We are not playing chess, we're playing roulette.

  Garry Kasparov

  Games, Purpose, Roulette

  "Russia Is Not a Democracy". Interview with Uwe Klussmann and Matthias Schepp, www.spiegel.de. March 15, 2007.

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• I got arrested for playing chess in the street. I said, it's because I'm black, isn't it.

  Milton Jones

  Funny, Humor, Black

  17 Copy quote

• It was not until I got my first job, at the University of Washington in Seattle, and began playing chess with Don Gordon, a brilliant young theorist, that I learned economic theory.

  Douglass North

  Jobs, Firsts, Brilliant

  10 Copy quote

• The 10,000-hours rule says that if you look at any kind of cognitively complex field, from playing chess to being a neurosurgeon, we see this incredibly consistent pattern that you cannot be good at that unless you practice for 10,000 hours, which is roughly ten years, if you think about four hours a day.

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Thinking, Years, Practice

  "Secrets of their success". Interview with Jennifer Reingold, archive.fortune.com. November 19, 2008.

  24 Copy quote

  Show source

• Playing chess has many aspects that can be useful in everyday situations like planning, concentration and combinations. You learn to win but also to lose and to be creative.

  Judit Polgar

  Winning, Creative, Everyday

  45 Copy quote