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Great Quotes
    Keywords: Culture & History

I always wanted a page of great go quotes, so now I've started one. Please add as you see fit. Thanks to [ext] Kiseido who has a nice collection; hopefully ours will soon be bigger.

Maybe you will also like Fun Go Facts.


Best of the Best

  • . . {it is} something unearthly . . . If there are sentient beings on other planets, then they play Go.
    - Emanuel Lasker, chess world champion[1]
  • The board is a mirror of the mind of the players as the moments pass. When a master studies the record of a game he can tell at what point greed overtook the pupil, when he became tired, when he fell into stupidity, and when the maid came by with tea.
    - Anonymous Go player

Other Greats

  • A few moments to learn, a lifetime to master.
    - Ancient Proverb
  • Go is to Western chess what philosophy is to double entry accounting.
    - From Shibumi, bestseller by Trevanian
  • Those interested in impressing others with their intelligence play chess. Those who would settle for being chic play backgammon. Those who wish to become individuals of quality, take up Go.
    - Microcomputer Executive and an expert player, when asked to compare Go with other games[2]
  • The difference between a stone played on one intersection rather than on an adjacent neighbor is insignificant to the uninitiated. The master of Go, though, sees it as all the difference between a flower and a cinderblock.
    - From The Challenge of Go: Esoteric Granddaddy of Board Games, by Dave Lowry?
  • I really believe that Go is destined to take the place of Chess as the leading intellectual game of the Occident, just as it has reigned supreme in the Orient for some four thousand years.
    - Edward Lasker, Go and Go-Moku, c. 1934

Pretty Good Quotes

  • Go uses the most elemental materials and concepts -- line and circle, wood and stone, black and white -- combining them with simple rules to generate subtle strategies and complex tactics that stagger the imagination.
    - Iwamoto Kaoru, 9-dan professional Go player and former Honinbo title holder
  • There are Oriental folk tales reminiscent of Rip Van Winkle in which people have been stopped by an old man one of the Immortals, played a game of Go, and upon getting up from the board have found a hundred years have gone by. This purely mental aspect of the game is in its intellectual dynamic. These Chinese had seen it as encompassing the principles of nature and the universe and of human life, as the diversion of the immortals, a game of abundant spiritual powers.
    - From The Game of Go, by Robert Buss
  • A nation which plays this game is to be reckoned with!
    - Executive of a large Chicago concern upon learning the true depth of the game as quoted in Go and Go-moku, c. 1934
  • The subtleties of this game are beyond the reach of the lazy, its triumph is too exquisite for the vulgar and materialistic man...
    - Herbert A. Giles, Wei-chi, or the Chinese game of war, in Temple Bar, England, Vol. 49, n° 194, 1877, p. 45. [3]
  • Go is science, art and game. Those chosen few may enter the Eternal Hall of Fame only, who combine the scientific precision, the artistic improvisation and the spiritual joy of the game in themselves.
    - Kajiwara Takeo at the European Go Congress in Budapest, 1986 interviewed by Gabaux. Not surprisingly rather similar to the formulation from Capablanca about the game of chess, who was one of the most artistic chess players of the last century.
  • Studying go is a wonderful way to develop both the creative as well as the logical abilities of children because to play it both sides of the brain are necessary.
    - Cho Chikun, among the world's strongest players and one of the three great prodigies in Go history

[1] tderz: I would like to know for once, what Lasker really has said. I quoted him as well several times, however never directly. Who has the oldest and/or most reliable source?

I also would very much like a solid source and the full quote!

[2] BenjaminGeiger: Was this Nolan Bushnell?

Wikipedia has an article about [ext] Nolan Bushnell. He is the founder of the Atari video game company.

[3] pulled from a [ext] mindzone article by Elisabeth Papineau



This is a copy of the living page "Great Quotes" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2004 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.