288 Quotes by Garry Kasparov

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.

Telling Ukrainians they provoked Putin by rejecting him and moving toward Europe is like telling a harassed woman she should wear longer skirts. Do not lose sight of who is the offender and who is the victim!

Vladimir Putin has this animalistic instinct of all dictators: He smells weakness. To quote Winston Churchill’s definition of appeasement: “An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.”

Repression may begin as a means to an end, but it always ends up being an end unto itself.

I wouldn’t overestimate the importance of my popularity in the country and abroad but at the end of the day it’s not as important because I believe that my presence here could make some difference and it could encourage people.

When the Soviet sports authorities attacked me for wanting to retain my chess winnings, they condemned not only my disobedience, but my lack of socialist solidarity. For me to say that my neighbors in Baku should see my keeping the Mercedes I won in Germany as normal, healthy thinking was radical and subversive.

Setbacks and losses are both inevitable and essential if you’re going to improve and become a good, even great, competitor. The art is in avoiding catastrophic losses in the key battles.

But the worries about operatorless elevators were quite similar to the concerns we hear today about driverless cars.

In conclusion, if you want to unravel the multitude of secrets of chess then don’t begrudge the time.