'If you wait for luck to turn up, life becomes very boring.'

Mikhail Tal

'Chess is thirty to forty percent psychology. You don’t have this when you play a computer. I can’t confuse it.'

Judit Polgar

'Without the element of enjoyment, it is not worth trying to excel at anything.'

Magnus Carlsen

'If you don’t win, it’s not a great tragedy – the worst that happens is that you lose a game.'

Bobby Fischer

'How you lose matters. Don't be afraid of losing - it paralyzes you.'

Judit Polgar

'I am more strongly confirmed than ever in the belief that the time devoted to chess is literally frittered away.'

Paul Morphy

'Even a poor plan is better than no plan at all.'

Mikhail Chigorin

'A good player is always lucky.'

José Raúl Capablanca

'Planning anything is hopeless.'

Mikhail Tal

'Well, I think, in large part, when I first began playing chess at seven years old, I was quite bad at it. I lost a lot of games when I first started.'

Hikaru Nakamura

'Win with grace, lose with dignity!'

Susan Polgar

'A sound plan makes us all heroes, the absence of a plan, idiots.'

Alexander Kotov