"Mikhail Tal: "The greatest of the champions was, of course, Emanuel Lasker."

“Put two players against each other who both have perfect technique, who both avoid weaknesses, and what is left?—a sorry caricature of chess.”

“You should keep in mind no names, nor numbers, nor isolated incidents, not even results, but only methods..The method produces numerous results; a few of these will remain in our memory, and as long as they remain few, they are useful to illustrate and to keep alive the rules which order a thousand results.”

“On the chessboard, lies and hypocrisy do not survive long. The creative combination lays bare the presumption of a lie; the merciless fact, culminating in the checkmate, contradicts the hypocrite.”

“Our efforts in chess attain only a hundredth of one percent of their rightful result...Our education, in all domains of endeavour, is frightfully wasteful of time and values.”

“He who wants to educate himself in Chess must evade what is dead in Chess...the habit of playing with inferior opponents; the custom of avoiding difficult tasks; the weakness of uncritically taking over variations or rules discovered by others; the vanity which is self-sufficient; the incapacity for admitting mistakes; in brief, everything that leads to standstill or to anarchy.”

“Education in Chess has to be an education in independent thinking and judgement. Chess must not be memorized, simply because it is not important enough... Memory is too valuable to be stocked with trifles.”