Top 40 Anatoly Karpov Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Chess is everything: art, science, and sport.”

— Anatoly Karpov

2. “Chess is my life, but my life is not chess.”

— Anatoly Karpov

3. “Happiness should always remain a bit incomplete. After all, dreams are boundless.”

— Anatoly Karpov

4. “I lost the match. I blame only myself for this. There were many opportunities to win. But I missed them, no one else.”

— Anatoly Karpov

5. “Style, I’ve got no style.”

— Anatoly Karpov

6. “Blunders rarely travel alone.”

— Anatoly Karpov

7. “Combinations with a queen sacrifice are among the most striking and memorable.”

— Anatoly Karpov

8. “You can’t play chess if you’re groggy from pills.”

— Anatoly Karpov

9. “Chess is a very tough game, and psychologically a tough game. And of course, chess needs a lot of qualities, human qualities. And so you must have a very strong nervous system, and then you must be well prepared; you must be able to work a lot.”

— Anatoly Karpov

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10. “It doesn’t require much for misfortune to strike in the King’s Gambit – one incautious move, and Black can be on the edge of the abyss.”

— Anatoly Karpov

11. “But how difficult it can be to gain the desired full point against an opponent of inferior strength, when this is demanded by the tournament position!”

— Anatoly Karpov

12. “To be champion requires more than simply being a strong player; one has to be a strong human being as well.”

— Anatoly Karpov

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13. “In Kansas I have a chess school.”

— Anatoly Karpov

14. “An amusing fact: as far as I can recall, when playing the Ruy Lopez I have not yet once in my life had to face the Marshall Attack!”

— Anatoly Karpov

15. “Pawns not only create the sketch for the whole painting, they are also the soil, the foundation, of any position.”

— Anatoly Karpov

16. “My studies with Botvinnik brought me immense benefit, particularly the homework assignments which forced me to refer to chess books and to work independently.”

— Anatoly Karpov

17. “I still remember Botvinnik’s reaction to each of my games, right from the opening moves. At first he would express amazement, then annoyance, and, finally irritation.”

— Anatoly Karpov

18. “The truth is that my chess development was nothing out of the ordinary, and it proceeded probably at a pace no faster than others.”

— Anatoly Karpov

19. “The fact that a knight is temporarily on the edge of the board is of no great significance.”

— Anatoly Karpov

20. “Just make the right estimation of your own strengths and weaknesses, and also that of your opponent.”

— Anatoly Karpov

21. “The first great chess players, including the world champion, got by perfectly well without constant coaches.”

— Anatoly Karpov

22. “If the opponent offers keen play I don’t object; but in such cases I get less satisfaction, even if I win, than from a game conducted according to all the rules of strategy with its ruthless logic.”

— Anatoly Karpov

23. “Furman astounded me with his chess depth, a depth which he revealed easily and naturally, as if all he were doing was establishing well-known truths.”

— Anatoly Karpov

24. “Like dogs who sniff each other when meeting, chess players have a ritual at first acquaintance: they sit down to play speed chess.”

— Anatoly Karpov

25. “It is dangerous to maintain equality at the cost of placing the pieces passively.”

— Anatoly Karpov

26. “By all means examine the games of the great chess players, but don’t swallow them whole. Their games are valuable not for their separate moves, but for their vision of chess, their way of thinking.”

— Anatoly Karpov

27. “Playing black, I put great stake in the Ruy Lopez: I liked it, feel it, and understand it; in matches with Hjartarson and Timman it served me well. – on preparing for World Championship versus Garry Kasparov.”

— Anatoly Karpov

28. “If you want to become a World Champion you should avoid playing in Open tournaments.”

— Anatoly Karpov

29. “The days when it was possible to win a serious game only by merit of sporting character or depth of chess understanding have vanished forever. Chess knowledge has become dominant, bypassing all the other factors that contribute to success.”

— Anatoly Karpov

30. “I am thinking about chess in schools in particular. In the USA more than 3200 children competed in an event.”

— Anatoly Karpov

31. “The ideal in chess can only be a collective image, but in my opinion it is Capablanca who most closely approaches this...”

— Anatoly Karpov

32. “I don’t pretend to anything more than harmony.”

— Anatoly Karpov

33. “No, I do not want to sacrifice four days for two games. My time is too valuable to do that.”

— Anatoly Karpov

34. “We need strong personalities and only one world champion to attract sponsors.”

— Anatoly Karpov

Featured in: Strong Quotes

35. “I still love to play chess. So I do not even spend a minute on the possibility to step back.”

— Anatoly Karpov

36. “This whole fuss did not only damage Fischer’s image, but that of the USA as well. The way the Americans treated one of their most popular citizens did not make a positive impression worldwide.”

— Anatoly Karpov

37. “Seville never had a rich chess tradition. Valencia is entirely different, it is enough to say that one of the city squares is named after me.”

— Anatoly Karpov

38. “The priority must be the unification of the world titles to straighten things out. But we should not wait that long anymore to change the situation, because we are running out of time.”

— Anatoly Karpov

39. “I like to do projects in which you can see statistical results. I am very happy for all these small children, who have been the biggest group of victims of iodine deficiency.”

— Anatoly Karpov

40. “Bulgaria is the first state that has been awarded for its excellent fight against iodine deficiency by UNICEF.”

— Anatoly Karpov

41. “First of all, we have to go back to the classical time control.”

— Anatoly Karpov

42. “After that, Kasparov stepped back from chess which is, and I want this to be clear, not good for chess in general at all. As a whole, the current situation in the chess world leaves a lot to be desired.”

— Anatoly Karpov

43. “No, no, it is obvious that the ECU should act as a close alliance for the benefit of chess.”

— Anatoly Karpov