Top 160 Garry Kasparov Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “At the end of the day, it’s all about money.”

— Garry Kasparov

2. “It is better to have a bad plan than no plan.”

— Garry Kasparov

Featured in: Chess Quotes

3. “All women are inferior to men.”

— Garry Kasparov

4. “If you wish to succeed, you must brave the risk of failure.”

— Garry Kasparov

5. “If you don’t take risks, you don’t drink champagne.”

— Garry Kasparov

6. “Winning is not a secret that belongs to a very few, winning is something that we can learn by studying ourselves, studying the environment and making ourselves ready for any challenge that is in front of us.”

— Garry Kasparov

7. “Chess is mental torture.”

— Garry Kasparov

8. “Chess is one of the few arts where composition takes place simultaneously with performance.”

— Garry Kasparov

9. “Few things are as psychologically brutal as chess.”

— Garry Kasparov

10. “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

11. “A master looks at every move he would like to make, especially the impossible ones.”

— Garry Kasparov

12. “The ability to work hard for days on end without losing focus is a talent. The ability to keep absorbing new information after many hours of study is a talent.”

— Garry Kasparov

13. “To become good at anything you have to know how to apply basic principles. To become great at it, you have to know when to violate those principles.”

— Garry Kasparov

14. “I’ve seen – both in myself and my competitors – how satisfaction can lead to a lack of vigilance, then to mistakes and missed opportunities.”

— Garry Kasparov

15. “Attackers may sometimes regret bad moves, but it is much worse to forever regret an opportunity you allowed to pass you by.”

— Garry Kasparov

16. “Question the status quo at all times, especially when things are going well.”

— Garry Kasparov

17. “It’s not enough to be talented. It’s not enough to work hard and to study late into the night. You must also become intimately aware of the methods you use to reach your decisions.”

— Garry Kasparov

18. “A game of chess holds many secrets. Fortunately! That is why we cannot clearly state whether chess is science, art, or a sport.”

— Garry Kasparov

19. “A grandmaster needs to retain thousands of games in his head, for games are to him what the words of their mother tongue are to ordinary people, or notes or scores to musicians...”

— Garry Kasparov

20. “When your house is on fire, you cant be bothered with the neighbors. Or, as we say in Chess, if your King is under attack you don’t worry about losing a Pawn on the Queen’s side.”

— Garry Kasparov

21. “The public must come to see that chess is a violent sport. Chess is mental torture.”

— Garry Kasparov

22. “The highest Art of the Chess player lies in not allowing your Opponent to show you what he can do.”

— Garry Kasparov

23. “The point of modern propaganda isn’t only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.”

— Garry Kasparov

24. “Losing can persuade you to change what doesn’t need to be changed, and winning can convince you everything is fine even if you are on the brink of disaster.”

— Garry Kasparov

25. “One does not succeed by sticking to convention.”

— Garry Kasparov

26. “A brilliant strategy is, certainly, a matter of intelligence, but intelligence without audaciousness is not enough.”

— Garry Kasparov

27. “Ultimately, what separates a Winner from a Loser at the Grandmaster level is the Willingness to do the Unthinkable.”

— Garry Kasparov

28. “Next to the intellectual stimulation of chess, the educational value is of great importance. Chess teaches logic, imagination, self-discipline, and determination.”

— Garry Kasparov

29. “One does not succeed by sticking to convention. When your opponent can easily anticipate every move you make, your strategy deteriorates and becomes commoditized.”

— Garry Kasparov

30. “Tactics involve calculations that can tax the human brain, but when you boil them down, they are actually the simplest part of chess and are almost trivial compared to strategy.”

— Garry Kasparov

31. “My nature is that I have to excite myself with a big challenge.”

— Garry Kasparov

32. “This obligation to move can be a burden to a player without strategic vision.”

— Garry Kasparov

33. “In chess, bigamy is acceptable but monarchy is absolute.”

— Garry Kasparov

34. “Enormous self-belief, intuition, the ability to take a risk at a critical moment and go in for a very dangerous play with counter-chances for the opponent – it is precisely these qualities that distinguish great players.”

— Garry Kasparov

35. “There are fixed rules in chess, and no one knows how the game will end.”

— Garry Kasparov

36. “This is the essential element that cannot be measured by any analysis or device, and I believe it’s at the heart of success in all things: the power of intuition and the ability to harness and use it like a master.”

— Garry Kasparov

37. “Russia is a mafia state today, and Putin is its top godfather.”

— Garry Kasparov

38. “Chess strength in general and chess strength in a specific match are by no means one and the same thing.”

— Garry Kasparov

39. “Sometimes the hardest thing to do in a pressure situation is to allow the tension to persist. The temptation is to make a decision, any decision, even if it is an inferior choice.”

— Garry Kasparov

40. “I used to attack because it was the only thing I knew. Now I attack because I know it works.”

— Garry Kasparov

41. “We think about time as something not to waste, not as something to invest.”

— Garry Kasparov

42. “With each success the ability to change is reduced. My longtime friend and coach Grandmaster Yuri Dokhoian, aptly compared it to being dipped in bronze. Each victory added another coat.”

— Garry Kasparov

43. “Nervous energy is the ammunition we take into any mental battle. If you don’t have enough of it, your concentration will fade. If you have a surplus, the results will explode.”

— Garry Kasparov

44. “Excelling at chess has long been considered a symbol of more general intelligence. That is an incorrect assumption in my view, as pleasant as it might be.”

— Garry Kasparov

45. “For me, chess is a language, and if it’s not my native tongue, it is one I learned via the immersion method at a young age.”

— Garry Kasparov

46. “Chess is a unique cognitive nexus, a place where art and science come together in the human mind and are then refined and improved by experience.”

— Garry Kasparov

47. “Perfectly correct chess exists only in theory.”

— Garry Kasparov

48. “Throughout my chess career I sought out new challenges, looking for things no one had done before.”

— Garry Kasparov

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49. “In chess the rules are fixed and the outcome is unpredictable, whereas in Putin’s Russia the rules are unpredictable and the outcome is fixed.”

— Garry Kasparov

50. “The most hopeful approach to peace in Ukraine is the Minsk Agreement, which includes Moscow.”

— Garry Kasparov