I am not a chess historian – I myself am a piece of chess history, which no one can avoid. I will not write about myself, but I am sure that someone will write...

A win by an unsound combination, however showy, fills me with artistic horror.

I have never in my life played the French Defence, which is the dullest of all openings.

I am fully and entirely concentrated on the board. I never even consider my opponent’s personality. So far as I am concerned, my opponent might as well be an abstraction or an automaton.

Capture of the adverse King is the ultimate but not the first object of the game.

I may be an old lion, but I can still bite someone’s hand off if he puts it in my mouth.

Only the player with the initiative has the right to attack.

A sacrifice is best refuted by accepting it.

Chess is intellectual gymnastics.

No great player blundered oftener than I done. I was champion of the world for twenty-eight years because I was twenty years ahead of my time. I played on certain principles, which neither Zukertort nor anyone else of his time understood. The players of today, such as Lasker, Tarrasch, Pillsbury, Schlechter and others have adopted my principles, and as is only natural, they have improved upon what I began, and that is the whole secret of the matter.