Chess quotes .....

"...only the player with the initiative has the right to attack"

-- Wilhelm STEINITZ

"no one ever won a game by resigning"

(Unfortunately origin unknown)

"A good sacrifice is one that is not necessarily sound but leaves your opponent dazed and confused"

-- Rudolph SPIELMANN

"Only a good bishop can be sacrificed, a bad bishop can only be lost."

-- Yuri RAZUVAYEV

"The great master places a Knight at e5; mate follows by itself."

"Some Knights don't leap - they limp."

"A chess game is divided into three stages: the first, when you hope you have the advantage, the second when you believe you have an advantage, and the third... when you know you're going to lose!"

-- Savielly Tartakower

"Black is now in desparate need of a good idea. Or, to put it standard chess notation, +-"

-- DVORETSKY and YUSUPOV, Opening Preparation

"A draw can be obtained normally by repeating three moves, but also by one bad move."

"The winner of the game is the player who makes the next-to-last mistake"

-- TARTAKOVER

Good positions don't win games, good moves do.
[Gerald ABRAHAMS]

I've wasted a Black.
[ABRAHAMS, after drawing a game with the Black pieces]

You can retreat pieces... but not pawns. So always think twice about pawn moves.
[Michael STEAN, in Simple Chess]

Open files can be used by both players. The chess player, not being an unselfish advocate of equal opportunity, naturally prefers a one-way system.
[Michael STEAN, in Simple Chess, on half-open files]

"Who is your opponent tonight?"
"Tonight I am playing against the Black pieces"

-- A. RUBINSTEIN (via ilias kastanas)

About the Deeper Blue-Kasparov match (1997):

" I just think we should look at this as a chess match," he said, "between the world's greatest chess player and Garry Kasparov. "

-- Louis GERSTNER, IBM Chairman (via Peter Lane)

"Chess is a sea in which a gnat may drink and an elephant may bathe." - Indian proverb

"It is not a move, even the best move, that you must seek, but a realisable plan." - Znosko-Borovsky

When asked, "How many moves do you see ahead?", CAPABLANCA replied:

"One move - the best one." (*)

Similarly, when asked, "How is that you pick better moves than you opponents?", ALEKHINE responded:

"I'm very glad you asked me that, because, as it happens, there is a very simple answer. I think up my own moves, and I make my opponent think up his."

(*) According to Horowitz + Reinfield's "How to think ahead in Chess" (published in the 1940's I believe), it is attributed to someone who BEAT Capa. - Peter Ballard

I have also seen it attributed to Tarrasch!

Gyula Breyer, early hyper-modern player, annotating a game (with tongue in cheek)

" after the first move 1.E4 white's game is in it's last throes"

"Style, I've got no style."

-- Anatoly KARPOV.

"Do you realize, Fischer almost never has any bad pieces. He exchanges them, and the bad pieces remain with his opponents. "

-- Yuri BALASHOV. Source: Gennady Nesis, Tactical Chess Exchanges, foreword