Garry Kasparov Quotes

I've met enough KGB colonels in my life.

If you wish to succeed, you must brave the risk of failure.

A grandmaster needs to retain thousands of games in his head, for games are to him what the words of their mother tongue are to ordinary people, or notes or scores to musicians.

It was not about losing my mental power; it's about not feeling good about my contribution to the game.

I think Russians today have a distorted picture of capitalism, liberal democracy and market economy.

Losing can persuade you to change what doesn't need to be changed, and winning can convince you everything is fine even if you are on the brink of disaster.

At the end of the day, it's all about money.

Excelling at chess has long been considered a symbol of more general intelligence. That is an incorrect assumption in my view, as pleasant as it might be.

Chess helps you to concentrate, improve your logic. It teaches you to play by the rules and take responsibility for your actions, how to problem solve in an uncertain environment.

Putin is like Al Capone.

I think we have very steady records of President Putin, who inherited the country with democratic values.

When I was preparing for one term's work in the Botvinnik school I had to spend a lot of time on king and pawn endings. So when I came to a tricky position in my own games I knew the winning method.

Solving new problems is what keeps us moving forward as individuals and as a society, so don't back down.

Nervous energy is the ammunition we take into any mental battle. If you don't have enough of it, your concentration will fade. If you have a surplus, the results will explode.

We think about time as something not to waste, not as something to invest.

Ultimately, what separates a Winner from a Loser at the Grandmaster level is the Willingness to do the Unthinkable.

It is better to have a bad plan than no plan.

Attackers may sometimes regret bad moves, but it is much worse to forever regret an opportunity you allowed to pass you by.

Without a goal [maneuvering is] aimless. You might be a master tactician, but you'll have no sense of strategy.

Any experienced player knows how a change in the character of the play influences your psychological mood.

Tactics involve calculations that can tax the human brain, but when you boil them down, they are actually the simplest part of chess and are almost trivial compared to strategy.

The biggest problem I see among people who want to excel in chess – and in business and in life in general – is not trusting their instincts enough.

The only way to fail for me is just not to try.

I have some strategical vision, I could calculate some few moves ahead and I have an intellect that is badly missed in the country which is run by generals and colonels.

In chess, bigamy is acceptable but monarchy is absolute.

Chess is mental torture.

One does not succeed by sticking to convention.

The ability to work hard for days on end without losing focus is a talent. The ability to keep absorbing new information after many hours of study is a talent.

It's not enough to be talented. It's not enough to work hard and to study late into the night. You must also become intimately aware of the methods you use to reach your decisions.

Russian Parliament today is a bunch of puppets that just fall in with the instructions from Kremlin.

When your house is on fire, you cant be bothered with the neighbors. Or, as we say in Chess, if your King is under attack you don't worry about losing a Pawn on the Queen's side

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

Chess is a unique cognitive nexus, a place where art and science come together in the human mind and are then refined and improved by experience.

In chess the rules are fixed and the outcome is unpredictable, whereas in Putin's Russia the rules are unpredictable and the outcome is fixed.

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

Chess strength in general and chess strength in a specific match are by no means one and the same thing.

Putin can't afford to leave the office because he will be in real danger of being prosecuted for things he and his people did during their stay in power.

Caissa, the goddess of chess, had punished me for my conservative play, for betraying my nature.

This obligation to move can be a burden to a player without strategic vision.

If you don't take risks, you don't drink champagne.

The highest Art of the Chess player lies in not allowing your Opponent to show you what he can do.

A master looks at every move he would like to make, especially the impossible ones

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

With each success the ability to change is reduced. My longtime friend and coach Grandmaster Yuri Dokhoian, aptly compared it to being dipped in bronze. Each victory added another coat.

Sometimes the hardest thing to do in a pressure situation is to allow the tension to persist. The temptation is to make a decision, any decision, even if it is an inferior choice.

I’ve seen - both in myself and my competitors - how satisfaction can lead to a lack of vigilance, then to mistakes and missed opportunities.

All women are inferior to men.

It is quite clear, however, that there won't be any real changes with the current clan structure having seized power in the course of the Karabakh conflict.

It's quite difficult for me to imagine my life without chess.

Chess is life in miniature. Chess is struggle, chess is battles