Lasker Quotes & Sayings

Loss generally occurs when a player overrates his advantage or for other reasons seeks to derive from a minute advantage a great return such as a forced win. — Emanuel Lasker

Do not permit yourself to fall in love with the end-game play to the exclusion of entire games. It is well to have the whole story of how it happened; the complete play, not the denouement only. Do not embrace the rag-time and vaudeville of chess. — Emanuel Lasker

The process of making pieces in Chess do something useful (whatever it may be) has received a special name: it is called the attack. The attack is that process by means of which you remove obstructions. — Emanuel Lasker

Without money nothing gets done. — Mary Lasker

Please lift your snowy skies
off my soul -
Your diamond dreams
slice through my veins — Else Lasker-Schuler

The most intelligent inspection of any number of fine paintings will not make the observer a painter, nor will listening to a number of operas make the hearer a musician, but good judges of music and painting may so be formed. Chess differs from these. The intelligent perusal of fine games cannot fail to make the reader a better player and a better judge of the play of others. — Emanuel Lasker

I am opposed to heart attacks and cancer and strokes the way I am opposed to sin. — Mary Lasker

I keep on fighting as long as my opponent can make a mistake. — Emanuel Lasker

An advantage could consist not only in a single important advantage but also in a multitude of insignificant advantages. — Emanuel Lasker

I have added these principles to the law: get the Knights into action before both Bishops are developed — Emanuel Lasker

Of my fifty-seven years I have applied at least thirty to forgetting most of what I have learned or read. Since then, I have acquired a certain ease and cheer which I should never again like to be without. ( ... ) I have stored little in my memory, but I can apply that little, and it is of use in many and varied emergencies. I keep it in order, but resist every attempt to increase its dead weight. — Emanuel Lasker

On a motif such as was indicated by Reti one cannot build the plan of a whole well contested game; it is too meagre, too thin, too puny for such an end. Reti's explanations, wherever they are concerned with an analysis which covers a few moves, are correct and praiseworthy. But when he abandons the foundations of analysis in order to draw too bold, too general a conclusion, his arguments prove to be mistaken. — Emanuel Lasker

Education in Chess has to be an education in independent thinking and judging. Chess must not be memorized ... — Emanuel Lasker

None of the great players has been so incomprehensible to the majority of amateurs and even masters, as Emanuel Lasker. — Jose Raul Capablanca

When you see a good move, look for a better one — Emanuel Lasker

Show me three lines of the opening theory moves and I will prove to you that two of them are incorrect. — Emanuel Lasker

'Reach for a (cigarette) instead of a sweet' - ... advertising slogan..(of) Albert Lasker, (with) Mary Lasker, health philanthropist, and originator of the Lasker Awards, an American version of the Nobel Prize ... and Memorial Sloan Kettering trustees. — Ralph W. Moss

The range of circumstances in which it is possible to presuppose the presence of a combination is very limited. The presence of such circumstances is the reason for the genesis of the idea in the master's brain. — Emanuel Lasker

In Chess, as it is played by masters, chance is practically eliminated. — Emanuel Lasker

Our efforts in chess attain only a hundredth of one percent of their rightful result ... Our education, in all domains of endeavour, is frightfully wasteful of time and values. — Emanuel Lasker

A chess game, after all, is a fight in which all possible factors must be made use of, and in which a knowledge of the opponent's good and bad qualities is of the greatest importance. — Emanuel Lasker

Bina, thank you. Bina, listen, this guy. His name wasn't Lasker. This guy-'
She puts a hand to his mouth. She has not touched him in three years. It probably would be too much to say that he feels the darkness lift at the touch of her fingertips against his lips. But it shivers, and light bleeds in among the cracks. — Michael Chabon

And the rigidity of the material with which we have to compose, is a more formidable opponent than Lasker or Capablanca. Because these lifeless opponents do not have any moments of human weakness! — Henri Weenink

Truth derives its strength not so much from itself as from the brilliant contrast it makes with what is only apparently true. This applies especially to Chess, where it is often found that the profoundest moves do not much startle the imagination. — Emanuel Lasker

The whole thing was set up very cleverly. The people who were torn from their normal lives and put on the trains may have heard that terrible things were happening in Auschwitz, but even up to the end, they kept on thinking: Perhaps it isn't so bad after all. And then they arrived and the SS told them: "The old people and the sick can take the truck. Anyone who is still young can walk." It took us a while to realize that the ones who were being driven were really being taken to the gas chambers. — Anita Lasker-Wallfisch

In school they told me I was a Jew, "a filthy Jew." At first I asked myself what exactly that was. But then I began to understand. I was a Jew, I was a member of the Jewish faith, the Jewish community. One time, when I was giving a reading at a school, someone asked me: "If it was so dangerous to be Jewish, why didn't you convert to Christianity?" My response was: "It's not as easy you think. When you're a Jew, you're a Jew. — Anita Lasker-Wallfisch

No other great master has been so misunderstood by the vast majority of chess amateurs and even by many masters, as has Emanuel Lasker. — Jose Raul Capablanca

I think there is a risk that the Holocaust will be placed under a glass bubble just like the Napoleonic Wars or the Thirty Years' War. If you don't make the connection between memories of past atrocities and the present, there isn't any point to it. There are plenty of horrible things happening today in Germany and in the rest of the world. — Anita Lasker-Wallfisch

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. — Emanuel Lasker

Vanity should never tempt a player to engage in a combat at the risk of loss of health. It is bad enough to lose without the additional annoyance of paying doctors' bills. — Emanuel Lasker

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

As Long as We Can Breathe, We Can Hope. — Anita Lasker-Wallfisch

Without error, there is no brilliancy. — Emanuel Lasker

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. — Emanuel Lasker

The combination player thinks forward; he starts from the given position, and tries the forceful moves in his mind — Emanuel Lasker

Chess is neither a science nor an art. It is what human nature most delights in
a fight. — Emanuel Lasker

The laws of chess do not permit a free choice: you have to move whether you like it or not. — Emanuel Lasker

The game gives us a satisfaction that Life denies us. And for the Chess player, the success which crowns his work, the great dispeller of sorrows, is named 'combination'. — Emanuel Lasker

In itself the title of world champion does not give any significicant advantages, if it is not acknowledged by the entire chess world, and a champion who does not have the chess world behind him is, in my view, a laughing-stock. — Emanuel Lasker

The fatal hour of this ancient game is approaching. In its modern form this game will soon die a drawing death - the inevitable victory of certainty and mechanization will leave its stamp on the fate of chess. — Emanuel Lasker

In mathematics, if I find a new approach to a problem, another mathematician might claim that he has a better, more elegant solution. In chess, if anybody claims he is better than I, I can checkmate him. — Emanuel Lasker

You should keep in mind no names, nor numbers, nor isolated incidents, not even results, but only methods..The method produces numerous results; a few of these will remain in our memory, and as long as they remain few, they are useful to illustrate and to keep alive the rules which order a thousand results. — Emanuel Lasker

To refer to the oft mooted question, "Which piece is stronger, the Bishop or the Knight?" it is clear that the value of the Bishop undergoes greater changes than that of the Knight. — Emanuel Lasker

A true poet does not say 'azure'; a true poet says 'blue. — Else Lasker-Schuler

If you think research is expensive, try disease! — Mary Lasker

The delight in gambits is a sign of chess youth ... In very much the same way as the young man, on reaching his manhood years, lays aside the Indian stories and stories of adventure, and turns to the psychological novel, we with maturing experience leave off gambit playing and become interested in the less vivacious but withal more forceful manoeuvres of the position player. — Emanuel Lasker

People want the answer to cancer, and they're not going to get it without spending money, because money is frozen energy that unfreezes itself when you pay people to work. — Mary Lasker

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. — Emanuel Lasker

The hardest game to win is a won game — Emanuel Lasker

My love for you is the sole image / Of God a human is allowed. — Else Lasker-Schuler

By what right does White, in an absolutely even position, such as after move one, when both sides have advanced 1. e4, sacrifice a pawn, whose recapture is quite uncertain, and open up his kingside to attack? And then follow up this policy by leaving the check of the black queen open? None whatever! — Emanuel Lasker

Without error there can be no brilliancy — Emanuel Lasker

My breath hovers over the river of God - / Softly I set my foot / On the path to my long home. — Else Lasker-Schuler

You know, being Jewish is problematic. Most people really don't know what exactly it means to be a Jew. We belong to a community of suffering, and that's what binds us together. But we are also extremely diverse. That's something I wish people who hate Jews as a group because they think they're so different would understand. We're also completely different within our own group! Essentially, we're just part of a community that has suffered a great deal, and not just in the Holocaust. — Anita Lasker-Wallfisch

In Democratic administrations, I visit the White House. — Mary Lasker

Lasker thought that his rationalism rendered him immune from the surprises of chess theory. — Savielly Tartakower

By positional play a master tries to prove and exploit true values, whereas by combinations he seeks to refute false values ... A combination produces an unexpected re-assessment of values. — Emanuel Lasker

The first chess book that I read was Dufresne's self-tutor, published with Lasker's Common Sense in Chess as an appendix. — Vasily Smyslov

The great World Champions Morphy, Steinitz, and Lasker were past masters in the art of Pawn play; they had no superiors in their handling of endgames. The present World Champion has not the strength of the other three as an endgame player, and is therefore inferior to them. — Jose Raul Capablanca

I have known many chess players, but among them there has been only one genius - Capablanca! — Emanuel Lasker

No great player blundered oftener than I done. I was champion of the world for twenty-eight years because I was twenty years ahead of my time. I played on certain principles, which neither Zukertort nor anyone else of his time understood. The players of today, such as Lasker, Tarrasch, Pillsbury, Schlechter and others have adopted my principles, and as is only natural, they have improved upon what I began, and that is the whole secret of the matter. — Wilhelm Steinitz

He who wants to educate himself in Chess must evade what is dead in Chess ... the habit of playing with inferior opponents; the custom of avoiding difficult tasks; the weakness of uncritically taking over variations or rules discovered by others; the vanity which is self-sufficient; the incapacity for admitting mistakes; in brief, everything that leas to standstill or to anarchy. — Emanuel Lasker

He who has a slight disadvantage plays more attentively, inventively and more boldly than his antagonist who either takes it easy or aspires after too much. Thus a slight disadvantage is very frequently seen to convert into a good, solid advantage. — Emanuel Lasker

If Steinitz continually took pains to discover combinations, the success or failure of his diligent search could not be explained by him as due to chance. Hence, he concluded that some characteristic, a quality of the given position, must exist that would indicate the success or the failure of the search before it was actually undertaken. — Emanuel Lasker

I believe in magic ... There is magic in the creative faculty such as great poets and philosophers conspicuously possess, and equally in the creative chessmaster. — Emanuel Lasker

At home I have a blue piano.
But I can't play a note.
It's been in the shadow of the cellar door
Ever since the world went rotten.
Four starry hands play harmonies,
The Woman in the Moon sang in her boat.
Now only rats dance to the clanks.
The keyboard is in bits.
I wept for what is blue. Is dead.
Sweet angels, I have eaten
Such bitter bread. Push open
The door of heaven. For me, for now-
Although I am still alive-
Although it is not allowed — Else Lasker-Schuler

Nobody would have me in their laboratory for five minutes. I couldn't cut up a frog, and I certainly couldn't perform surgery. I'm better at making it possible for other people. — Mary Lasker

To find the right plan is just as hard as looking for its sound justification. — Emanuel Lasker

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. — Emanuel Lasker

Love great first lines and paragraphs. From The Yiddish Policemen's Union:
Nine months Landsman's been flopping at the Hotel Zamenhof without any of his fellow residents managing to get themselves murdered. Now somebody has put a bullet in the brain of the occupant of 208, a yid who was calling himself Emanuel Lasker. — Michael Chabon

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. — Emanuel Lasker

When Alekhine recognizes the weakness in his position he has a tendency to become very aggressive. Patient defence is not for him if he can see the slightest chance of creating an attack. Yet sound strategy often demands that you submit to the opponent's will so as to strengthen your weaknesses and get rid of defects in your game. — Emanuel Lasker

Mary Lasker was an entrepreneur; she was a socialite. She was kind of a legendary networker. She became interested in saying, 'Well, you know, if these diseases don't have political support we'll never conquer them.' And she made, really, cancer her special cause. — Siddhartha Mukherjee

Were my smile not submerged in my countenance, / I should suspend it over her grave. — Else Lasker-Schuler

Many an expert says that there is a certain affinity between (Capablanca's style) and that of the world master, Lasker. There may be some truth in it. Lasker's style is clear water, but with a drop of poison which is clouding it. Capablanca's style is perhaps still clearer, but it lacks that drop of poison. — Jacques Mieses

Show me three variations in the leading handbook on the openings, and I will show you two of those three that are defective. — Emanuel Lasker

Everything in life is relative. — Anita Lasker-Wallfisch

Sometimes I even say that I have surpassed Lasker in using psychology. How? Well, sometimes I use psychology with a portion of risk. That is something else, something that Lasker wouldn't allow. — Viktor Korchnoi

Auschwitz was one of the wealthiest places in the world. Everyone who was deported there had been in such a hurry that they were only able to take along the things they loved the most. Well, of course, a musician would take along her instrument. But then they would take these precious possessions away from the prisoners once they arrived. All these things were kept in a part of the camp the prisoners called "Canada." It was like a giant warehouse. — Anita Lasker-Wallfisch