Great Quotes
I always wanted a page of great go quotes, so now I've started one. Please add as you see fit. Thanks to Kiseido who has a nice collection; hopefully ours will soon be bigger.
Maybe you will also like Fun Go Facts, or Great Moments in KGS Chat
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]
- While the Baroque rules of chess could only have been created by humans, the rules of go are so elegant, organic, and rigorously logical that if intelligent life forms exist elsewhere in the universe, they almost certainly play go.
Edward Lasker[2]
- 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
- You don't have to be really good anymore to get good results. What's happening with Chess is that it's gradually losing its place as the par excellence of intellectual activity. Smart people in search of a challenging board game might try a game called Go.
-Hans Berliner, The New York Times, Feb 6, 2003
- 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[3][4]
- 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
- Go is one of the supreme accidents of human creation!
- Milton Bradley from his websiteMilt's go Page
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. [5]
- 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] This quote is very similar to Emanuel Lasker's quote. I am having a very difficult time finding source information on both of them, yet they are too good not to include. Currently, my humble uneducated opinion limited to Google and some German websites is that most likely it is from Emanuel Lasker and not Edward Lasker. If anyone has any information, please let us know!
[3] BenjaminGeiger: Was this Nolan Bushnell?
Wikipedia has an article about Nolan Bushnell. He is the founder of the Atari video game company.
[4] ding ding?: This quote is slightly ironic. An "individual of quality" would not say such a thing.