" Chess is a sea in which a gnat may drink and an elephant may bathe " -- INDIAN PROVERB
It's often quoted during analysis.
One of my favorite sayings, though, came as a response to this.
About 40 players were watching an online broadcast of a major match.
One of the players was a pawn down, and there was some argument as to how much compensation the other had.
One of the masters present quoted Fine, " As Reuben Fine said, "I'd rather have a pawn than a finger. "
To which Grandmaster Roman Dzindzichashvili replied:
" It all depends: which pawn and which finger? " -- Duif
" The essence of chess is thinking about what chess is. " -- David Bronstein
"Having spent 200 hours on the above, the young player, even if he possesses no special talent for chess, is likely to be among those two or three thousand chessplayers [who play on a par with a master]. There are, however, a quarter of a million chessplayers who annually spend no fewer than 200 hours on chess without making any progress. Without going into any further calculations, I can assert with a high degree of certainty that nowadays we achieve only a fraction of what we are capable of achieving. "
-- Em. Lasker, Manual of Chess
" We perceive after a careful consideration of the evolution of the chess mind that such evolution has gone on, in general, in a way quite similar to that in which it goes on with the individual chess player, only with the latter more rapidly. "
-- Richard RETI" After giving a student the basic mating patterns and strategies you must begin giving them advanced concepts. At first these ideas will not make sense, many players will have a vague idea of what you are talking about but nothing more. Even a fragmented understanding of these concepts will prove useful though, and eventually they will improve as these lessons are assimilated by repetition and example. "
-- Jeremy SILMAN, The Amateur's Mind , 1995
" We begin with the hypothesis that any subject can be taught effectively in some intellectually honest form to any child at any stage of development. ... (The "spiral curriculum") ... Is it not possible ... to introduce them to some of the major ... ideas earlier, in a spirit perhaps less exact and more intuitive?"
-- Jerome BRUNER, The Process of Education , 1960
For a contrasting view:
"the spread of secondary and latterly of tertiary education has created a large population of people, often with well-developed literary and scholarly tastes, who have been educated far beyond their capacity to undertake analytic thought".
-- Peter MEDAWAR, The Art of the Soluble
" It is often supposed that, apart from their 'extraordinary powers of memory', expert players have phenomenal powers of calculation. The beginner believes that experts can calculate dozens of moves ahead and he will lose to them only because he cannot calculate ahead so far. Yet this is utter nonsense. From my own experience I can say that grandmasters do not do an inordinate amount of calculating. Tests (notably de Groot's experiments) supports me in this claim. If anything, grandmasters often consider fewer alternatives; they tend not to look at as many possible moves as weaker players do. And so, perversely, chess skill often seems to reflect the ability to avoid calculations. It is, in truth, not clear that chess is a game of calculation. Of course there are times when intense calculation is called for, and often the master is better at dealing with these situations than the amateur. No wonder, he has had more practise than the amateur, but all the same his innate calculating ability need not be any greater. Most of the time it is something quite different that is required in chess, something more akin to 'understanding' or 'insight'. "
-- David NORWOOD , Chess and Education
" Yet to calculate is not in itself to analyze. A chess-player, for example, does the one without effort at the other. It follows that the game of chess, in its effects upon mental character, is greatly misunderstood. I am not now writing a treatise, but simply prefacing a somewhat peculiar narrative by observations very much at random; I will, therefore, take occasion to assert that the higher powers of the reflective intellect are more decidedly and more usefully tasked by the unostentatious game of draughts than by all the elaborate frivolity of chess. In this latter, where the pieces have different and bizarre motions, with various and variable values, what is only complex is mistaken (a not unusual error) for what is profound. The attention is here called powerfully into play. If it flag for an instant, an oversight is committed, resulting in injury or defeat. The possible moves being not only manifold but involute, the chances of such oversights are multiplied; and in nine cases out of ten it is the more concentrative rather than the more acute player who conquers. "
-- An excerpt from Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan POEChess Quotes: Here are some of the most famous chess quotes ever written. Some are real gems. I collected these from a lot of sources and I will surely ad more. This months # 1 and #2 quotes are...
#1 " If you want to lose a miniature, then here are three helpful tips. First of all, it is a big help if you are Black: losing with White in under 20 moves requires a special talent which few possess. Secondly, choose a provocative opening, for example an opening in which you try to realise strategic ambitions, but at the cost of backward development and delayed castling. Thirdly, if something goes slightly wrong, don't reconcile yourself to defending a bad position - seek a tactical solution instead! Don't worry about the fact that tactics are bound to favour the better developed side; just go ahead anyway. Follow this advice and at least you will get home early. " -- NUNN
#2 " He jumps so terribly " -- Dick van Geet's tiny son on knight forks.
Some of my best quotes.
I once wrote...
"A woman leaves a man for a thousand reasons, a man leaves because she is crazy."
I now say..."A woman leaves a man for a thousand reasons, a man leaves because she doesn't like chess"
"Very few men are romantics and most of those romantics end up being killed by jealous husbands"
"Wait! Where is my King?" - Rebecca Aaron June 25, 2007
"Oh! I'm Black!" - Rebecca Aaron June 25, 2007 While solving a Chess Problem.