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
- Zhang Yunqi lists the qualities required to excel at weiqi, "the tactic of the soldier, the exactness of the mathematician, the imagination of the artist, the inspiration of the poet, the calm of the philosopher, and the greatest intelligence."
- Zhang Yunqi, Weiqi de faxian (Discovering weiqi), Beijing, Internal document of the Chinese Weiqi Institute 1991, p. 2.[4]
- 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]
- 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 cinder block.
- From The Challenge of Go: Esoteric Granddaddy of Board Games, by Dave Lowry
- 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
- 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 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
Pretty Good Quotes
- 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
- 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.
- 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
- Go is one of the supreme accidents of human creation!
- Milton Bradley from his websiteMilt's go Page
- A nation which plays this game is to be reckoned with!
- Executive of a large Chicago company upon learning the true depth of the game as quoted in Go and Go-moku, c. 1934
[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!
anonymous: I think this is in Edward Lasker's autobiographical book, or maybe in his Go and Go Moku
[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!
aceofspades: It's much more likely (IMHsurf-basedO) that Edward Lasker said this. Edward Lasker was less high up in chess (IM), and spent more time with Go, actually writing a book. Emanuel Lasker, his cousin, did some of both as well but actually became Chess World Champion, only hearing about Go later and playing for a while. I just don't think Emanuel Lasker was involved enough in Go, compared to Edward, to have been the one to have said it.
Phat: Edward Lasker was not related to Emanuel Lasker (Who was world champion for 27 years), he said this several times and also wrote so in a letter, and in his book "Chess for Fun and Chess for Blood". They were very good friends though.
[3] BenjaminGeiger: Was this Nolan Bushnell?
Wikipedia has an article about Nolan Bushnell. He is the founder of the Atari video game company.