Chess Board Quotes & Sayings

I learned that fighting on the chess board could also have an impact on the political climate in the country. — Garry Kasparov

Chess is like war on a board — Bobby Fischer

The queen was my favorite chess piece. Unlike the women I knew in real life, she was powerful. Her job was to defend her husband at all costs, because while he was weak and practically defenseless - only allowed to move one square at a time - she was the strongest player on the board, hindered by no restrictions at all. — Rachel Vincent

Bodies like this give sexual desire its meaning! It's for this that penises rise like drawbridges and vaginas become engorged with blood! It's for this that people throw snot-nosed kids into ravines, cross raging rivers, or ice-pick up the wrong side of frozen waterfalls! It's for this that politicians undo their flies in election season, porn magazines with their pages stuck together are found stacked in church basements, people chop off body parts and mail them to ex-lovers, risk hair on palms, stolen wallets, planes flying into buildings, and lice that hop like chess figurines on a board whose players are ever changing. — Barry Webster

Go is to Western chess what philosophy is to double-entry accounting. — Trevanian

These chunks represent patterns (such as faces) as well as specific knowledge. For example, a world-class chess master is estimated to have mastered about 100,000 board positions. Shakespeare used 29,000 words but close to 100,000 meanings of those words. Development of expert systems in medicine indicate that humans can master about 100,000 concepts in a domain. If we estimate that this "professional" knowledge represents as little as 1 percent of the overall pattern and knowledge store of a human, we arrive at an estimate of 107 chunks. — Ray Kurzweil

You may not see every single piece of the puzzle that creates your life
you may not see every move the grand chess player makes
but know, He is in complete control of the game board. Sometimes certain pieces are moved or knocked over to make room for new ones. Other times, things happen because of the world we live in. But everything in the end, will always turn out for good. It's a nice promise, isn't it? To know there's a reason for it all? — Rachel Van Dyken

Life isn't always like Chess. But sometimes it is. In a really difficult game, queen leaves board at the end. The difference is, you call it sacrifice in Chess. — Heshan Udunuwara

Realize that the social media success equation isn't big moves on the chess board, it's little moves made every day that eventually add up to a major shift. — Jay Baer

Marriage is like a game of chess except the board is flowing water, the pieces are made of smoke and no move you make will have any effect on the outcome. — Jerry Seinfeld

When she moves a chess piece on the board, it isn't so she can win; it's to move the game forward. She's just keeping us all moving forward. — Danielle Stewart

I view the director as my boss. I'm the pawn on the chess board. I don't say something to the director easily, because they are my boss. — Jennifer Lawrence

You sit at the board and suddenly your heart leaps. Your hand trembles to pick up the piece and move it. But what chess teaches you is that you must sit there calmly and think about whether it's really a good idea and whether there are other, better ideas. — Stanley Kubrick

Let's say you're playing chess against someone who's got more pieces on the board and decades more experience than we do. How do you win?"

"You don't," Rose said. "Unless you cheat."

"We already tried cheating," I said. "Getting him in trouble, risking his job. He's apparently planning a response tonight."

"Change the game, then," Rose said.

"Again, we tried that. There's no winning. Not really. So what I'm proposing is pretty simple."

"Do tell," Rose said. "Also, you do know that we're being followed?"

"We're surrounded," I said. "But she wants to deal badly enough that she'll hear us out before she murders us. Nevermind that. Our analogy here. I'm proposing the pigeon strategy. Knock over all of the pieces, shit on the board, and then strut around like we're the victors. — Wildbow

Tis action moves the world ... [in] the game of chess, mind that: ye cannot leave your men to stand unmoving on the board and hope to win. A soldier must first step upon the battlefield if does mean to cross it. — Susanna Kearsley

Place the contents of the Chess box in a hat, shake them up vigorously, pour them on the board from a height of two feet, and you get the style of Steinitz — Henry Bird

Imagine God and Man set down together to play that game of chess that we call life. The one player is a master, the other a bungling amateur, so the outcome of the game cannot be in question. The amateur has free will, he does what he pleases, for it was he who chose to set up his will against that of the master in the first place; he throws the whole board into confusion time and again and by his foolishness delays the orderly ending of it all for countless generations, but every stupid move of his is dealt with by a masterly counterstroke, and slowly but inexorably the game sweeps on to the master's victory. But, mind you, the game could not move on at all without the full complement of pieces; Kings, Queens, Bishops, Knights, Pawns; the master does not lose sight of a single one of them. — Elizabeth Goudge

When a chess player looks at the board, he does not see a static mosaic, a 'still life', but a magnetic field of forces, charged with energy - as Faraday saw the stresses surrounding magnets and currents as curves in space; or as Van Gogh saw vortices in the skies of Provence. — Arthur Koestler

For what it was worth, she got the impression that Niessa liked her, or at least approved of her, in the same way a chess-player approves of one of his pieces when it stays where it's been put and doesn't go wandering off all over the board. — K.J. Parker

Chess programs don't play chess the way humans play chess. We don't really know how humans play chess, but one of the things we do is spot some opportunity on the chess board toward a move to capture the opponent's queen. — Stuart J. Russell

It is a gross overstatement, but in chess, it can be said I play against my opponent over the board and against myself on the clock. — Viktor Korchnoi

Deep Blue didn't win by being smarter than a human; it won by being millions of times faster than a human. Deep Blue had no intuition. An expert human player looks at a board position and immediately sees what areas of play are most likely to be fruitful or dangerous, whereas a computer has no innate sense of what is important and must explore many more options. Deep Blue also had no sense of the history of the game, and didn't know anything about its opponent. It played chess yet didn't understand chess, in the same way a calculator performs arithmetic bud doesn't understand mathematics. — Jeff Hawkins

The fact that a knight is temporarily on the edge of the board is of no great significance. — Anatoly Karpov

Its just you and your opponent at the board and you're trying to prove something — Bobby Fischer

The mother is the most essential piece on the board, the one you must protect. Only she has the range. Only she can move in multiple directions. Once she's gone, it's a whole different game. — Kelly Corrigan

The last five years had been a series of carefully orchestrated events. Every move, every strategy had been poured over in painstaking detail before it was set into motion.
Pieces on a chess board.
A collision of fate and circumstance. I'd planned for every hitch. Every contingency. Except the one that blindsided me like a vat of acid to the face.
I fell in love with her. — A. Zavarelli

I was very competitive growing up. I can't even play chess anymore because I used to play tournament chess in school. There's too much sense memory of sitting in front of a chess board and getting super intense about it. It's ruined the game for me. — Chris Hardwick

Endings of one rook and pawns are about the most common sort of endings arising on the chess board. Yet though they do occur so often, few have mastered them thoroughly. They are often of a very difficult nature, and sometimes while apparently very simple they are in reality extremely intricate. — Jose Raul Capablanca

Hey, say you are looking at a chess board. Is there anything you can't see? No. But are you guaranteed to win? Not at all, because you can't see what the other guy is thinking. — Malcolm Gladwell

You always have to be keeping track, especially in this scenario [ The Hateful Eight], of where everybody is. They're pieces on a chess board. — Quentin Tarantino

The chess-board is the world; the pieces are the phenomena of the universe; the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance. — Thomas Henry Huxley

When it comes to fully understanding how to strategically move all the pieces on the marketing and distribution chess board on a worldwide basis, Jeff Blake is always thinking two moves ahead and that gives Sony a true competitive edge. He is the studio's secret weapon and while he would be the first to credit his fantastic sales and marketing team, there are few executives here that deserve more credit for our successes during the past several years than Jeff. — Amy Pascal

If I'm home with no chore at hand, and a package of books has come, the television set and the chess board and the unanswered mail will have to manage without me if one of the books is a detective story. — Rex Stout

As with Steinitz, Fischer's genius has often been concealed by controversies away from the board. Like Lasker, Fischer has raised chess to new financial heights despite frequent retreats from serious play. And, like Capablanca, Fischer is recognized by millions of non-players and has won the game many new enthusiasts. — Andrew Soltis

Play on both sides of the board is my favourite strategy. — Alexander Alekhine

When everything on the board is clear it can be so difficult to conceal your thoughts from your opponent. — David Bronstein

I have a lot of time to think. To look at the strands of the past weave themselves into the knots of the present, and to imagine how the future might unfold from them. So many possibilities. Like a game of chess. And you, my little pawn, you are the catalyst, walking through the board one small step at a time, towards ... what? What sort of endgame will you bring us all, Orphan? — Lavie Tidhar

Emotional instability can be one of the factors giving rise to a failure by chess players in important duels. Under the influence of surging emotions (and not necessarily negative ones) we sometimes lose concentration and stop objectively evaluating the events that are taking place on the board. — Mark Dvoretsky

The man of system ... is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it ... He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might choose to impress upon it. — Adam Smith

Politicians should be dedicated to the welfare of the people, but sometimes politics becomes like a game of chess, in which the sole aim is to stay on board as long as possible. — Nirmala Srivastava

He hated games they made the world look too simple. Chess, in particular, had always annoyed him. It was the dumb way the pawns went off and slaughtered their fellow pawns while the king lounged about doing nothing. If only the pawns would've united ... the whole board could've been a republic in about a dozen moves. — Terry Pratchett

Now that number was gone, covered up by the jet-black image of a chess piece. Neil's knowledge of chess was hazy at best, but he knew for sure that wasn't a king. "You did it," Neil said, too stunned to manage anything else. "Let Riko be King," Kevin said, with the exaggerated enunciation of the thoroughly sloshed. "Most coveted, most protected. He'll sacrifice every piece he has to protect his throne. Whatever. Me?" Kevin gestured again, meaning to indicate himself but too drunk to get his hand higher than his waist. "I'm going to be the deadliest piece on the board." "Queen," Andrew said somewhere behind Neil. — Nora Sakavic

Chess is war over the board. The object is to crush the opponents mind. — Bobby Fischer

Once in a Moscow chess club I saw how two first-category players knocked pieces off the board as they were exchanged, so that the pieces fell onto the floor. It was as if they were playing skittles and not chess! — Alexander Kotov

You and I should play sometime. I think you would like it,' she said." It's a game of strategy, mostly. The strong pieces are in the back row, while the weak pieces - the pawns - are all in the front, ready to take the brunt of the attack. Because of their limited movement and vulnerability, most people underestimate them and only use them to protect the more powerful pieces. But when I play I protect my pawns.' ... 'They may be weak when the game begins, but their potential is remarkable. Most of the time, they'll be taken by the other side and held captive until the end of the game. But if you're careful - if you keep your eyes open and pay attention to what your oppenent is doing, if you protect your pawns and they reach the other side of the board, do you know what happens then?' I shook my head, and she smiled.
"Your pawn becomes a queen." ... 'Because they kept moving forward and triumphed against impossible odds, they become the most powerful piece in the game. — Aimee Carter

Independence of thought is a most valuable quality in a chess-player, both at the board and when preparing for a game. — David Bronstein

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

Know that life, which does everything perfectly, is now moving you in a new direction. The chess piece of your existence is being moved to a new square on the board of life. — Frederick Lenz

The beautiful wooden board on a stand in my father's study. The gleaming ivory pieces. The stern king. The haughty queen. The noble knight. The pious bishop. And the game itself, the way each piece contributed its individual power to the whole. It was simple. It was complex. It was savage; it was elegant. It was a dance; it was a war. It was finite and eternal. It was life. — Rick Yancey

As a personality, I'm fighter, you know. And I don't give up, and if I believe I'm correct, I'm right, then I work, and I fight. Okay, this could be over a chess board, this could be in life, and so I defend my principles. — Anatoly Karpov

In a battle of wills, of the gods of old. For each his revenge, will he forfeit his soul. On the chess board of blood, will their narrative play. aged, innocent lives, revenge claims her way. Out of hate will come love, and love will come hate. For immortal and man, have entwined their damned fate. — L.A. Starkey

I attend to my fitness. I go the gym every day and try to maintain my physical fitness; without that, it is tough to take challenges on the chess board. — Viswanathan Anand

I once heard of a murderer who propped his two victims up against a chess board in sporting attitudes and was able to get as far as Seattle before his crime was discovered. — Robert Benchley

Remorse has no place in a warrior's mind ... A war is like a game of chess, Nicholaa. Every battle is like a well-thought-out move on the board. Once it begins, there shouldn't be any emotion involved whatsoever. — Julie Garwood

You don't have to be really good anymore to get good results. What's happening with Chess is that it's gradually losing its place as the par excellence of intellectual activity. Smart people in search of a challenging board game might try a game called Go. — Hans Berliner

I play chess on my iPhone, and indulge in a fond fantasy that my opponent isn't a mind of digital code but Dad: It's Dad's attacks I repel; Dad's defenses I dismantle; Dad's king scurrying around the board to prolong the inevitable. — David Mitchell

Suddenly it was obvious to me in my analysis I had missed what
Fischer had found with the greatest of ease at the board — Mikhail Botvinnik

When top-level chess players look at a board, they see words, not letters. Instead of seeing twenty-five pieces, they may see just five or six groups of pieces. That's why it's easy for them to remember where all the pieces are. — Geoff Colvin

Relationships are a battle. They are a chess game. And what did I do? I just threw all my chess pieces down on the board at once, and said, Here! Have them all! — Sophie Kinsella

You can win in business by playing checkers until someone sneaks in one night after you've closed for the day and flips the board. — Mark Miller

A deep laugh stirred in his chest, and his thumb brushed over the backs of her fingers before he withdrew his hand. She felt the rasp of a callus on his thumb, the sensation not unlike the tingling scrape of a cat's tongue. Bemused by her own response to him, Annabelle looked down at the chess piece in her hand.
"That is the queen - the most powerful piece on the board. She can move in any direction, and go as far as she wishes." There was nothing overtly suggestive in his manner of speaking ... but when he spoke softly, as he was doing at that moment, there was a husky depth in his voice that made her toes curl inside her slippers.
"More powerful than the king?" she asked.
"Yes. The king can only move one square at a time. But the king is the most important piece."
"Why is he more important than the queen if he's not the most powerful?"
"Because once he is captured, the game is over. — Lisa Kleypas

Chess is a game with simple rules and pieces, a small sixty-four-space board, but there are more possible chess games than there are atoms in the universe. — Austin Grossman

We lived in the provincial town of Ramat Gan where I spent most of my youth adjacent to the chess board. — Arnon Goldfinger

You broke a man today. Doesn't that affect you at all? These are lives, not pieces in a chess game with your uncle.'
'You're wrong. We are on my uncle's board and these men are all his pieces.'
'Then each time you move one of them, you can congratulate yourself on how much like him you are. — C.S. Pacat

A passed pawn increase in strength as the number of pieces on the board diminishes. — Jose Raul Capablanca

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

It was once stated that God didn't play with dice, but then I discovered that most of the Gods did play with dice. However, they didn't see Destiny playing chess the entire time behind them. They never stood a chance, seeing that Destiny was on both sides of the board. — Lionel Suggs

I pull on her tether all the time but it won't sink in. I have a feeling I'm using too much magic. I can't hold so many under my control and pull them in deep. Dean is the only one I have fully immersed. I am the puppet master. I am the only player on the board.
Pacey doesn't even know that the game has begun.-Lilith — Ashley Jeffery

Chess teaches foresight, by having to plan ahead; vigilance, by having to keep watch over the whole chess board; caution, by having to restrain ourselves from making hasty moves; and finally, we learn from chess the greatest maxim in life - that even when everything seems to be going badly for us we should not lose heart, but always hoping for a change for the better, steadfastly continue searching for the solutions to our problems. — Benjamin Franklin

In the ancient china, a man came to an emperor with his invention of chess, he demonstrated it to his king, and king was very impressed with his invention and asked him what he expects as a reward. The man told the king, he wants grain of rice to be placed on square doubling the grain rice on each subsequent square. King thought it to be very humble and modest reward and asked his servant to fulfill the request, by the time the rice grains filled the first half of the chess board, he had more than 4 billion rice grains, by the time the servant got to 64th square, the man had more than (18x10^18) or more than all the wealth of the land. — Amin Nagpure

I have read that the Builders made toys that could play chess. Toys, as small as the silver bishop in my hand, that could defeat any player, taking no time to select moves that undid even the best minds amongst their makers. The bishop made a satisfying click when tapped to the board. I beat out a little rhythm, wondering if any point remained in playing a game that toys could own. If we couldn't find a better game then perhaps the mechanical minds the Builders left behind would always win. — Mark Lawrence

Chess holds deep wisdoms of the people. It is truly an image of life, the reflection of human fate that has shown us the earthly way of suffering in darkness and permanent shortage of time. Like in chess, we encounter all kinds of traps, mistakes, settlements, sacrifices, kings, and queens, doubled pawns, and extraordinary moves while we are on the board ourselves. — Pope John Paul II

The world is one unending chess match, my dear, and I am the one playing it how I please. I poke and prod to move my pieces to places I find desirable. And the defiant ones who resist me I simply remove from the board." He pulled up his right sleeve, showing Laura a sheathed dagger strapped to his arm. "But you, Laura, are not of this chess match at all. You walked unexpectedly onto my board, scattering my pieces out of the way, the ones that I had worked on so tirelessly to arrange to perfection. — J.S. Bailey

[Professor Bragg asserts that] In sodium chloride there appear to be no molecules represented by NaCl. The equality in number of sodium and chlorine atoms is arrived at by a chess-board pattern of these atoms; it is a result of geometry and not of a pairing-off of the atoms. — Henry Edward Armstrong

The Chess-board must be placed with a white square at the right-hand corner. — Howard Staunton

And the good writer chooses his words for their 'meaning', but that meaning is not a a set, cut-off thing like the move of knight or pawn on a chess-board. It comes up with roots, with associations, with how and where the word is familiarly used, or where it has been used brilliantly or memorably. — Ezra Pound

All we have gained then by our unbelief Is a life of doubt diversified by faith, For one of faith diversified by doubt: We called the chess-board white-we call it black. — Robert Browning

King Yorandt to Kristina in book three of Fracture the Secret Enemy Saga~Secrets
release date: Summer 2014

Even the master does not play perfectly. He can only hope to make fewer mistakes than his opponent, and that in the end, he is the victor. Sajah (chess) is a ruthless game where the pieces are all pawns and the Queen is the true killer.
She spares no one to protect the king. The king however, is ruled by all of the pieces that lay before him, even his opponent. Every move is a decision that can change the whole board, and the endgame. — Virginia McKevitt

Human life very much resembles a game of chess: for, as in the latter, while a gamester is too attentive to secure himself very strongly on one side of the board, he is apt to leave an unguarded opening on the other, so doth it often happen in life. — Henry Fielding

He felt like a chess-master who, two moves from achieving checkmate, suddenly sees a live kitten dropped on to the middle of the board, scattering pieces. — Frances Hardinge

We are in truth but pieces on this chess board of life,which in the end we leave,only to drop one by one into the grave of nothingness. — Omar Khayyam