Quotes from Stephen Potter

What is gamesmanship? Most difficult of questions to answer briefly. "The Art of Winning Games Without Actually Cheating"—that is my personal "working definition."

How to be one up—how to make the other man feel that something has gone wrong, however slightly.

Your function as a critic is to show that it is really you yourself who should have written the book, if you had had the time, and since you hadn't you are glad that someone else had, although obviously it might have been done better.

On the other hand, a basic play, in perfect order, can be achieved by, say, whistling fidgetingly while playing yourself. And I once converted two down into two up when playing golf against P. Beard, known also as the leader of an orchestra, by constantly whistling a phrase from the Dorabella Variation with one note – always the same note – wrong.

There is nothing more putting off to young university players than a slight suggestion that their etiquette or sportsmanship is in question.

And now they smile at Paradine, Who but would smile at Paradine? (That man of games, called Paradine) For the Gamesman came his way. Paradine

A good general attack can be made by talking to your opponent about his own job, in the character of the kind of man who always tries to know more about your own profession than you know yourself.

In lawn tennis mixed, the basic chivalry move is to pretend to serve less fiercely to the woman than to the man. This is particularly useful if your first service tends to be out in any case.

Women are quite unlike men. Women have higher voices, longer hair, smaller waistlines, daintier feet and prettier hands. They also invariably have the upper hand.

If your friend says of some picture, Yes, but what does it mean? ask him, what his carpet means or the circular patterns on his shoes