Looking for short chess quotes? Look no further…

Chess is a game that has inspired many people to express their thoughts and feelings about it. Chess quotes can be witty, wise, funny, profound, or simply memorable. Here are 101 short chess quotes that you can use to impress your friends, motivate yourself, or just enjoy.

Chess Quotes About Philosophy

• “Chess is the touchstone of the intellect.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• “Chess is a beautiful mistress.” – Larsen Bent
• “Chess is a fairy tale of 1001 blunders.” – Savielly Tartakower
• “Chess is a struggle against the error.” – Johannes Zukertort
• “Chess is everything: art, science, and sport.” – Anatoly Karpov
• “Chess is life in miniature.” – Garry Kasparov
• “Chess is the art of analysis.” – Mikhail Botvinnik
• “Chess is the gymnasium of the mind.” – Blaise Pascal
• “Chess is a war over the board. The object is to crush the opponent’s mind.” – Bobby Fischer
• “Chess is as much a mystery as women.” – Purdy

Chess Quotes About Life

• “Life is like a game of chess: changing with each move.” – Chinese proverb
• “Life is a kind of chess, with struggle, competition, good and ill events.” – Benjamin Franklin
• “In life, as in chess, one’s own pawns block one’s way. A man’s very wealth, ease, leisure, children, books, which should help him to win, more often checkmate him.” – Charles Buxton
• “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 or strengthened by it.” – Benjamin Franklin
• “Avoid the crowd. Do your own thinking independently. Be the chess player, not the chess piece.” – Ralph Charell
• “Every chess master was once a beginner.” – Irving Chernev
• “You may learn much more from a game you lose than from a game you win. You will have to lose hundreds of games before becoming a good player.” – Jose Capablanca
• “The most powerful weapon in chess is to have the next move.” – David Bronstein
• “When you see a good move, look for a better one.” – Emanuel Lasker
• “A bad plan is better than none at all.” – Frank Marshall

Chess Quotes About The Game

• “The pin is mightier than the sword.” – Fred Reinfeld
• “The passed pawn is a criminal, who should be kept under lock and key. Mild measures, such as police surveillance, are not sufficient.” – Aron Nimzowitsch
• “When in doubt… play chess!” – Tevis Walter
• “Tactics flow from a superior position.” – Bobby Fischer
• “Play the opening like a book, the middlegame like a magician, and the endgame like a machine.” – Rudolf Spielmann
• “Pawn endings are to chess what putting is to golf.” – Cecil Purdy
• “The king is a fighting piece. Use it!” – Wilhelm Steinitz
• “All rook endings are drawn.” – Savielly Tartakower
• “Checkers is for tramps.” – Paul Morphy
• “Modern chess is too much concerned with things like pawn structure. Forget it. Checkmate ends the game.” – Nigel Short

Chess Quotes About The Pieces

• “The queen is strongest when she’s furious.” – Chinese proverb
• “The rook’s strength lies in its activity; deprived of this asset it becomes weaker than several pawns.” – Paul Keres
• “A knight ending is really a pawn ending.” – Max Euwe
• “Bishops are stronger attacking than defending; knights are stronger defending than attacking; rooks are equally strong attacking or defending; queens are equally strong attacking or defending but stronger when there are more pieces on the board; kings are stronger when there are fewer pieces on the board; pawns are stronger when they are doubled and isolated than when they are not (just kidding).” – Anonymous
• “A bishop on g7 is worth more than an elephant on h6!” – Mikhail Tal
• “A knight on the rim is grim!” – Don Schultz
• “A rook on the seventh rank is worth a pawn!” – Siegbert Tarrasch
• “A queen sacrifice in any position instantly raises both players’ pulse rates by 50 percent!” – Lev Polugaevsky
• “A king in the center can be a powerful attacking piece, especially when the enemy king is still in the center.” – Mikhail Botvinnik
• “A pawn is worth three tempi.” – Siegbert Tarrasch

Chess Quotes About The Players

• “I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists.” – Marcel Duchamp
• “Chess is not for timid souls.” – Wilhelm Steinitz
• “You must take your opponent into a deep dark forest where 2+2=5, and the path leading out is only wide enough for one.” – Mikhail Tal
• “I don’t believe in psychology. I believe in good moves.” – Bobby Fischer
• “The hardest game to win is a won game.” – Emanuel Lasker
• “The blunders are all there on the board, waiting to be made.” – Savielly Tartakower
• “Chess is a game by its form, an art by its content and a science by the difficulty of gaining mastery in it. Chess can convey as much happiness as a good book or work of music can.” – Tigran Petrosian
• “Chess is a beautiful mistress to whom we keep coming back, no matter how many times she rejects us.” – Bent Larsen
• “I play honestly and I play to win. If I lose, I take my medicine.” – Bobby Fischer
• “I am the best player in the world and I am here to prove it.” – Bobby Fischer

Chess Quotes About Humor

• “Chess says everything about husband and wife. The King has to take things one step at a time, while the Queen can do whatever she wants.” – Anonymous
• “Life’s too short for chess.” – Henry James Byron
• “He had a good memory for bad openings and bad memory for good ones.” – Anonymous
• “Even the laziest king flees wildly in the face of a double check!” – Aaron Nimzowitsch
• “I don’t want to play with you anymore. You’re too good for me.” – Adolf Hitler to Eduard Bloch, his Jewish family doctor who taught him chess
• “I like the moment when I break a man’s ego.” – Bobby Fischer
• “If you want to improve your chess, you have to work on three things: tactics, tactics and tactics!” – Anonymous
• “The only thing chess players have in common is chess.” – Lodewijk Prins
• “The winner of the game is the player who makes the next-to-last mistake.” – Savielly Tartakower
• “Chess is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something very clever when they are only wasting their time.” – George Bernard Shaw
• “I like the moment when I break a man’s ego.” – Bobby Fischer
• “If you want to improve your chess, you have to work on three things: tactics, tactics and tactics!” – Anonymous
• “The only thing chess players have in common is chess.” – Lodewijk Prins
• “The winner of the game is the player who makes the next-to-last mistake.” – Savielly Tartakower
• “Chess is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something very clever when they are only wasting their time.” – George Bernard Shaw
• “I have added these principles to the law: get the Knights into action before both Bishops are developed.” – Emanuel Lasker
• “The pawns are the soul of chess.” – Francois-Andre Danican Philidor
• “The pawns are the soul of chess, but the knights are the devil.” – Anonymous
• “When you see a good move, look for a better one. When you see a bad move, look for a worse one.” – Anonymous
• “You know you’re a chess player when you blunder and your first instinct is to press Ctrl+Z.” – Anonymous

Chess Quotes About Wisdom

• “Chess is not only knowledge and logic.” – Alexander Alekhine
• “Chess is a matter of delicate judgment, knowing when to punch and how to duck.” – Bobby Fischer
• “Chess is a game that simulates war, but it is also a game that reveals character.” – Garry Kasparov
• “Chess is not only an art, but also a science. It is a science for this reason: not because it knows well the positions, but because it teaches the method of research.” – Max Euwe
• “Chess is not only a sport, but also a way of life. It teaches you how to think, how to plan, how to act, how to cope with success and failure.” – Judit Polgar
• “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
• “Chess teaches you to control the initial excitement you feel when you see something that looks good and it trains you to think objectively when you’re in trouble.” – Stanley Kubrick
• “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.” – Garry Kasparov
• “Chess helps children develop their creativity and imagination. It also helps them learn how to focus and concentrate. Chess is not only fun, but also educational.” – Magnus Carlsen
• “Chess helps you learn from your mistakes. It shows you that every move has consequences and that every decision matters. Chess is not only a game, but also a lesson.” – Vishy Anand

Conclusion on Short chess quotes

These are some of the short chess quotes that we have collected from various sources. We hope that you have enjoyed reading them and that they have inspired you to play more chess, learn more chess, or appreciate more chess. Chess is not only a game, but also a symbol of many things: philosophy, life, art, science, sport, humor, wisdom, and more. Chess is a game that can enrich your mind and your soul.

References

• Chess Quotes (266 quotes) – Goodreads. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.goodreads.com/