Fischer Bobby Quotes

“When I played Bobby Fischer, my opponent fought against organizations - the television producers and the match organizers. But he never fought against me personally. I lost to Bobby before the match because he was already stronger than I. He won normally.”

— Boris Spassky

“Bobby Fischer has an enormous knowledge of chess and his familiarity with the chess literature of the USSR is immense.”

— Boris Spassky

“To become a chess grandmaster also seems to take about ten years. (Only the legendary Bobby Fischer got to that elite level in less than that amount of time: it took him nine years.) And what's ten years? Well, it's roughly how long it takes to put in ten thousand hours of hard practice. Ten thousand hours is the magic number of greatness.”

— Malcolm Gladwell

“I think the combination of genius and celebrity, in the case of Bobby Fischer, was a dangerous cocktail.”

— Liz Garbus

“Bobby Fischer was hugely important for the American chess community because it put chess on the map - he made it possible for other chess players to make a living.”

— Liz Garbus

“Bobby Fischer started off each game with a great advantage: after the opening he had used less time than his opponent and thus had more time available later on. The major reason why he never had serious time pressure was that his rapid opening play simply left sufficient time for the middlegame.”

— Edmar Mednis

“It was clear to me that the vulnerable point of the American Grandmaster (Bobby Fischer) was in double-edged, hanging, irrational positions, where he often failed to find a win even in a won position”

— Efim Geller

“Bobby Fischer is the greatest Chess genius of all time!”

— Alexander Kotov

“What I admired most about him [Bobby Fischer] was his ability to make what was in fact so difficult look easy to us. I try to emulate him.”

— Magnus Carlsen

“My God, Bobby Fischer plays so simply”

— Alexey Suetin

“I like to say that Bobby Fischer was the greatest player ever. But what made Fischer a genius was his ability to blend an American freshness and pragmatism with Russian ideas about strategy”

— Bruce Pandolfini

“With or without the title, Bobby Fischer was unquestionably the greatest player of his time”

— Burt Hochberg

“In complicated positions, Bobby Fischer hardly had to be afraid of anybody”

— Paul Keres

“You want to know what I want? I'll tell you what I want. I want back what Bobby Fischer took with him when he disappeared.”

— Ben Kingsley

“What is chess, do you think? Those who play for fun or not at all dismiss it as a game. The ones who devote their lives to it for the most part insist that it's a science. It's neither. Bobby Fischer got underneath it like no one before and found at its center, art.”

— Ben Kingsley

“Nowadays, a 13-year-old would probably know more than Bobby Fischer knew when he retired. They analyse all the moves and prepare themselves on their computers. But that doesn't mean they are special.”

— Garry Kasparov

“I used to play a lot of chess and competitive chess and study chess and as you get to the grandmasters and learn their styles when you start copying their games like the way they express themselves through ... The way Kasparov or Bobby Fischer expresses themselves through a game of chess is it's astonishing. You can show a chess master one of their games and they'll say "Yeah, that is done by that player."”

— Rainn Wilson

“How do you beat Bobby Fischer? You play him at any game but chess. I try to stay in games where I have an edge.”

— Warren Buffett

“The life of a chess master is much more difficult than that of an artist - much more depressing. An artist knows that someday there'll be recognition and monetary reward, but for the chess master there is little public recognition and absolutely no hope of supporting himself by his endeavors. If Bobby Fischer came to me for advice, I certainly would not discourage him - as if anyone could - but I would try to make it positively clear that he will never have any money from chess, live a monk-like existence and know more rejection than any artist ever has, struggling to be known and accepted.”

— Marcel Duchamp