Garry Kasparov - How Life Imitates Chess (2007)

35 Sourced Quotes

View all Garry Kasparov Quotes
My love of dynamic complications often led me to avoid simplicity when perhaps it was the wisest choice.

Garry Kasparov
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.

Garry Kasparov
In chess, bigamy is acceptable but monarchy is absolute.

Garry Kasparov
If you're already in a fight, you want the first blow to be the last and you had better be the one to throw it.

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

Garry Kasparov
Everyone, at any age, has talents that aren't fully developed-even those who reach the top of their profession.

Garry Kasparov
Setbacks and losses are both inevitable and essential if you're going to improve and become a good, even great, competitor. The art is in avoiding catastrophic losses in the key battles.

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

Garry Kasparov
There can be no finer example of the inspiring powers of competition to shatter the status quo than Hungary's Judit Polgar.

Garry Kasparov
Question the status quo at all times, especially when things are going well.

Garry Kasparov
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.

Garry Kasparov
The stock market and the gridiron and the battlefield aren't as tidy as the chessboard, but in all of them, a single, simple rule holds true: make good decisions and you'll succeed; make bad ones and you'll fail.

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

Garry Kasparov
If critics and competitors can't match your results, they will often denigrate the way you achieve them. Fast, intuitive types are called lazy. Dedicated burners of the midnight oil are called obsessed. And while it's obviously not a bad idea to hear and consider the opinions of others, you should be suspicious when these criticisms emerge right on the heels of success.

Garry Kasparov
The worst enemy of the strategist is the clock. Time trouble... Reduces us all to pure reflex and reaction, tactical play. Emotion and instinct cloud our strategic vision when there is no time for proper evaluation.

Garry Kasparov
Throughout my chess career I sought out new challenges, looking for things no one had done before.

Garry Kasparov
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.

Garry Kasparov
Thanks to the Polgars the adjective 'men's' before events and the 'affirmative action' women's titles such as Woman Grandmaster have become anachronisms.

Garry Kasparov
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.

Garry Kasparov
We have to always look ahead enough moves to be well prepared, even for victory!

Garry Kasparov
Ironically, the main task of chess software companies today is to find ways to make the program weaker, not stronger, and to provide enough options that any user can pick from different levels and the machine will try to make enough mistakes to give him a chance.

Garry Kasparov
You can't overestimate the importance of psychology in chess, and as much as some players try to downplay it, I believe that winning requires a constant and strong psychology not just at the board but in every aspect of your life.

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

Garry Kasparov
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.

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

Garry Kasparov
I like to say that the attacker always has the advantage.

Garry Kasparov
For inspiration I look to those great players who consistently found original ways to shock their opponents. None did this better than the eighth world champion, Mikhail Tal. The "Magician of Riga" rose to become champion in 1960 at age twenty-three and became famous for his aggressive, volatile play.

Garry Kasparov
Having spent a lifetime analyzing the game of chess and comparing the capacity of computers to the capacity of the human brain, I've often wondered, where does our success come from? The answer is synthesis, the ability to combine creativity and calculation, art and science, into a whole that is much greater than the sum of its parts. 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.

Garry Kasparov
For me, chess is a language, and if it's not my native tongue, it is one I learned via the immersion method at a young age.

Garry Kasparov
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.

Garry Kasparov