"The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman. The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life." -- Paul Morphy

"A chess genius is a human being who focuses vast, little-understood mental gifts and labors on an ultimately trivial human enterprise." -- George Steiner

"A game, the philosopher Bernard Suits wrote, is 'the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles.' It is one thing to shove a fistful of chess pieces across the board to surround the enemy king. It is quite another to get them there in accordance with the ancient game's intricate rules, and while your grandmaster opponent tries to do the same." -- Oliver Roeder

"The impression of chess as an art connected me forever with the game. I wanted to get into chess, to understand its laws, its secrets." -- Yuri Averbakh

"The Game of Chess is not merely an idle amusement; several very valuable qualities of the mind, useful in the course of human life, are to be acquired and strengthened by it, so as to become habits ready on all occasions; for life is a kind of Chess, in which we have often points to gain, and competitors or adversaries to contend with, and in which there is a vast variety of good and ill events, that are, in some degree, the effect of prudence, or the want of it. By playing at Chess then, we may learn: 1st, Foresight, which looks a little into futurity, and considers the consequences that may attend an action... 2nd, Circumspection, which surveys the whole Chess-board, or scene of action: the relation of the several Pieces, and their situations; ... 3rd, Caution, not to make our moves too hastily..." -- Benjamin Franklin

"There is no remorse like the remorse of chess." -- H. G. Wells