288 Quotes by Garry Kasparov

Today our society places great emphasis on specialization and focus. Students used to go off to university with the idea of broadening themselves; now it has become a mostly vocational experience. Students use higher education as a means to develop a skill that will make them attractive to employers. We place so much emphasis on being good at what we do that we fail to realize that getting better at what we do might be best achieved by getting better at other – and wildly different – things.

It’s quite difficult for me to imagine my life without chess.

Chess is life in miniature. Chess is struggle, chess is battles.

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.

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.

There are many facts showing that Putin’s people enriched themselves by using power mechanisms so that’s why for them losing power means losing their fortunes.

Kortchnoi’s heritage is many-faceted – over the decades he has several times corrected and changed his style. But the main thing has invariably remained his search for chess truth.

I’m not paranoid, but I am cautious. I don’t drink tea with strangers, I don’t fly Aeroflot and I avoid certain countries with close ties to Russia.

Somehow, people always forget that it’s much easier to install a dictator than to remove one.