"Not all artists may be chess players, but all chess players are artists."
- Marcel Duchamp

"Chess holds its master in its own bonds, shaking the mind and brain so that the inner freedom of the very strongest must suffer."
- Albert Einstein

"You can only get good at chess if you love the game."
- Bobby Fischer

"Life is a kind of chess, with struggle, competition, good and ill events."
- Benjamin Franklin

"The Game of Chess is not merely an idle amusement several very valuable qualities of the mind, useful in the course of human life, are to be acquired and strengthened by it, so as to become habits ready on all occasions for life is a kind of Chess, in which we have points to gain, and competition or adversaries to contend with, and in which there is a vast variety of good and ill events, that are, in some degree, the effect of prudence, or want of it. By playing at Chess then, we may learn:
First, Foresight...
Second, Circumspection...
Third, Caution...
And lastly, We learn by Chess the habit of not being discouraged by present bad appearances in the state of our affairs the habit of hoping for a favorable chance, and that of persevering in the secrets of resources."
-Benjamin Franklin

"The chess-board is the world,
the pieces are the phenomenon of the Universe,
the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature,
The player on the other side is hidden from us."
- T.H. Huxley

"Chess teaches you to control the initial excitement you feel when you see something that looks good and it trains you to think objectively when you're in trouble."
- Stanley Kubrick

"Chess problems demand from the composer the same virtues that characterize all worthwhile art: originality, invention, conciseness, harmony, complexity, and splendid insincerity."
- Vladimir Nabokov, 'Poems and Problems', 1969 

"I played chess with him and would have beaten him sometimes, only he always took back his last move, and ran the game out differently."
- Mark Twain, Life on Mississippi