Frases de Gari Kaspárov

“Ahora sabía que había entrado al país malvado, pero no conocía las reglas de combate.”

“No me gusta el juego de Tal, porque Botvínnik considera que no se puede ganar jugando como lo hace él, porque el ajedrez tiene sus leyes.”

“Cuando Botvínnik jugó contra Tal, no hubo color en el primer match y eso fue absolutamente normal. Lo anormal fue su posterior derrota.”

“Las piezas blancas y negras parecían representar divisiones maniquíes entre la luz y la oscuridad, el bien y el mal, en el mismo espíritu del hombre.”

“Veo en la lucha ajedrecística un modelo pasmosamente exacto de la vida humana, con su trajín diario, sus crisis y sus incesantes altibajos.”

“En ajedrez mi palabra es cercana a la de Dios.”

“He tenido el mejor profesor particular que hubiera podido desear.”

“Está claro que Artur Yusúpov está peor, pero creo que juega para ganar.”

“Quisiera dejar constancia de mi admiración por Kárpov, que luchó bravamente hasta el final. Yo he sentido su fuerza, moral y psicológicamente hablando.”

“Cuando jugó 45… h5 no podía creer a mis propios ojos.”

“Es una pena utilizar una novedad tan fuerte con un rival tan flojo”

“Question the status quo at all times, especially when things are going well.”

“We think about time as something not to waste, not as something to invest.”

“With each success the ability to change is reduced. My longtime friend and coach Grandmaster Yuri Dokhoian, aptly compared it to being dipped inbronze. Each victory added another coat.”

“[E]ven if we disagree about the Iraq invasion in 2003 and the consequent moves made by Bush 43 Administration, the decision of Obama Administration to retreat, especially announcing it, this is the worst you can do. At noon, at that day, that month, we are out. By sending the signal to the radical Islamists, to the forces that were about just to recover and prepare again for attacks against the free world, that was a recipe for disaster. It created a vacuum. It’s not a surprise that we live in a world today that is a much more dangerous place than in 2008. It helped Vladimir Putin to regain his confidence and because after his attack against the Republic of Georgia in 2008 in August, he was basically rewarded by Obama/Clinton “reset” policy instead of paying a price for taking territory of neighboring country.”

“I like to say that the attacker always has the advantage.”

“Anatoly Karpov and I donated the prize fund from our 1986 world championship match to the Chernobyl victim relief fund.”

“My response to Bernie Sanders' you know uh stories you know fairytales is that uh the failure of capitalism is still much better than the success of socialism.”

“In conclusion, if you want to unravel the multitude of secrets of chess then don't begrudge the time.”

“Allow dissent & free media for 6 months in Russia and see what happens. Putin would never risk it because he’s terrified of his own people and the truth, like every dictator.”

“If you're already in a fight, you want the first blow to be the last and you had better be the one to throw it.”

“The public must come to see that chess is a violent sport. Chess is mental torture.”

“Reforms are only institutional if they have a real effect on how people live.”

“Putin hasn’t come out of the blue, you know? It’s not just Putin. That’s why again in my book Winter is Coming, I emphasize why Vladimir Putin and enemies of the free world must be stopped. Because Putin, you may call him bosses of bosses, Capo dei Capi, he’s like a spider in the center of this web. Because Putin helps other bad guys, other thugs, dictators, and terrorists to sort of feel free to attack the free world. Because they all know that unless they attack the free world, unless they attack the United States as the leader of the free world, they will have no credibility with their own people because neither Putin nor Iranian mullahs, nor Al Qaeda, Islamic State or other dictators around the globe, they have nothing to offer but confrontation. They have to present themselves of the protectors of their own people against the world evil. And of course, they have to attack the free world that produces everything that, by the way, they use quite effectively against us. They cannot compete in innovations, they cannot compete in ideas, in productivity. But they can compete in something quite different because for us, each human life is unique. *For them, killing a thousand people, hundreds of thousands of people, a million is a demonstration of strengths. So we should realize that they have no allergy for blood. And they will keep pressing their advantage, and it’s not that we have grown – that our enemies have grown stronger. It’s our resolve that has grown weaker.”

“Millions like me in Russia want a free press, the rule of law, social justice, and free and fair elections. My new job is to fight for those people and to fight for these fundamental rights.”

“So what’s happened since ’92, it’s where the administrations that changed quite dramatically, the foreign policy, and it was working more like pendulum, swinging from one side to the other. Clinton did very little, W did too much, Obama has been doing nothing. It sent a message – sent numerous messages across the world. While people knew in the 50s and 60s and 70s and 80s that America was there, America was consistent. Even if you have a change in the Oval Office, one party replaces another, you could rely on the United States. America was behind American allies. Today? It’s probably, it’s a springtime to be an American enemy because this administration gives up everything to the enemies and betrays allies. And going back to George W. administration, it’s very popular to criticize Bush today, Bush 43. Especially for the Iraq invasion, and I’ve heard many voices, even within the Republican Party, it’s just floating with the popular trend. First of all, I have to say as somebody who was born and raised in a Communist country, I cannot criticize any action that led to the destruction of dictatorship. I think his people had wrong expectations. When they saw the collapse of Saddam’s dictatorship after American invasion of Iraq and then the collapse of a few other dictatorships during the Arab Spring, they had expectations that next day, it would be a democracy. It’s wrong. It was very naive because dictators succeeds the staying in power for so many years, not because he’s a nice guy, just helps his people to get out of poverty, but because he’s brutal, he’s cruel. He succeeds in destroying opposition, first political opposition and then freedom of press and remaining horizontal ties in the society. All the NGOs, anything that could represent not just a threat to him, but it’s any sort of the slightest dissent. It’s kind of a political desert. What do you expect in a desert after 10, 20, 30 – in the case of Gaddafi, 42 years of dictatorship?”

“People ask about dictators, "Why?" But dictators themselves ask, "Why not?"”

“You must also have a sense of when to stop.”

“The United States is a very different thing. It's a continent-spanning nation built from scratch by millions of immigrants from every part of the world on top of its native population.”

“Bush Administration was a success.”

“This obligation to move can be a burden to a player without strategic vision.”

“As for polling, when an anonymous caller reaches a Russian at home to ask his opinion of the man who controls every aspect of the Russian police state, it would take great courage to report anything less than enthusiastic support. It is a testament to the bravery of many of my countrymen that Putin does not yet receive the 99 percent approval scores that Saddam Hussein and Muammar Qaddafi enjoyed up until the minute they no longer had the power of life and death over their own citizens.”

“Russia’s election spectacle on March 18 isn’t only a domestic distraction. It provides Putin’s defenders in the free world with rhetorical ammunition, as do the approval polls and fake controversies over the fake opposition candidates. There is no form of democratic process or opposition in Putin’s Russia. Pretending otherwise makes you complicit in his propaganda. Stop calling them elections. Stop calling Putin a president. Stop calling to congratulate him on his victories. Let us begin the fight against Putin’s lies with the fundamental truth about what he really is.”

“It's not common, in our age, for someone to retire while still at the top, but I'm a man who needs a goal, and who wants to make a difference.”

“The NSA is to the Stasi what a bad hotel is to a maximum security prison.”

“The old joke about the two main Soviet papers, Pravda (“Truth”) and Izvestia (“News”), was “There’s no news in the Truth and no truth in the News!””

“[I]t's very important to understand that this is the dictators always operate short-term, and democracies must operate long-term because it’s not about one individual who’s currently running the country, whether it’s president or prime minister. It’s about the success of the country. It’s about the success of the system. It’s about pressing, you know, all advantages and their strategic, lasting institutions that could make the difference even when the president or prime minister is no longer in the office.”

“Since ’91, it was more of poker because again, it’s America, even today is much more powerful than all the enemies combined. It’s probably the first time after the collapse of the Soviet Union that the forces of freedom, the free world, had overwhelming military and economic advantage. And also politically, it dominated the field because even the worst dictatorships now they’re trying to pretend that they have elections. Not pressing it’s advantages looks quite odd because it again create this vacuum, and also I think it affects ordinary people in these countries. Whether it’s Iran, Arab countries, Russia, because they used to look at America as a beacon of freedom and the country that stood firm defending the free world. And now it’s quite odd because America is there, but America is not there. The whole stories about current political climate here and elections, they’re for the eroding reputation of the United States, and I think the damage caused by this administration to the prestige of the country, and especially to the prestige of the presidency, this damage could take years to recover and rebuild.”

“Like any bully, Putin only picks fights that he is sure he can win. History tells us that sooner or later, he will become so overconfident, so accustomed to his opponents folding their cards against his weak hand, that he will overstep, potentially resulting in a catastrophe on a global scale.”

“[C]hess was treated by the Soviet authorities as a very important and useful ideological tool to demonstrate the intellectual superiority of the Soviet communist regime over the decadent West.”