The hardest game to win is a won game.
I have added these principles to the law: get the Knights into action before both Bishops are developed.
When you see a good move, look for a better one.
Without error there can be no brilliancy.
While the Baroque rules of Chess could only have been created by humans, the rules of Go are so elegant, organic, and rigorously logical that if intelligent life forms exist elsewhere in the universe, they almost certainly play Go.
By some ardent enthusiasts Chess has been elevated into a science or an art. It is neither; but its principal characteristic seems to be – what human nature mostly delights in – a fight.
On the chessboard, lies and hypocrisy do not survive long. The creative combination lays bare the presumption of a lie; the merciless fact, culminating in the checkmate, contradicts the hypocrite.
I keep on fighting as long as my opponent can make a mistake.
Education in Chess has to be an education in independent thinking and judging. Chess must not be memorized...
The laws of chess do not permit a free choice: you have to move whether you like it or not.
Steinitz was a thinker worthy of a seat in the halls of a university. A player, as the world believed he was, he was not; his studious temperament made that impossible; and thus he was conquered by a player and in the end little valued by the world, he died.