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'.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.