Quotes from 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.

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.

When you see a good move, look for a better one

Without error there can be no brilliancy

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'.

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.

By some ardent enthusiasts Chess has been elevated into a science or an art. It is neither; but its principle characteristic seems to be—what human nature mostly delights in—a fight.

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

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 a checkmate, contradicts the hypocrite.

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.

You should keep in mind no names, nor numbers, nor isolated incidents, not even results, but only methods. The method produces numerous results

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.

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

When you see a good move, look for a better one.

The hardest game to win is a won game

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.

On the chessboard, lies and hypocrisy do not survive long

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'.

Without error there can be no brilliancy

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.

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

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