“Our mind is all we’ve got. Not that it won’t lead us astray sometimes, but we still have to analyze things out within ourselves.”

Nobody has single-handedly done more for the US image than me…

When I won the World Championship in ’72, the United States had an image of, you know, a football country, baseball country, but nobody thought of it as an intellectual country.

I studied that first Karpov-Kasparov match for a year and a half before I cracked it, what they were doing, and discovered that it was all prearranged move-by-move. There’s no doubt of it in my mind.

Genius. It’s a word. What does it really mean? If I win I’m a genius. If I don’t, I’m not.

A piece of garbage like Kasparov might be called a chess genius, but he’s like an idiot savant. Outside of chess he knows nothing.

I want to see the U.S. wiped out. Death to the U.S.

Psychologically, you have to have confidence in yourself and this confidence should be based on fact.

You are never too old to play chess!

The Russians have held my title for ten years and they’re going to be in for it when I win the Championship. They’re going to have to wait and play under my conditions.

I don’t keep any close friends. I don’t keep any secrets. I don’t need friends. I just tell everybody everything, that’s all.

I’d like to travel around, be an international playboy. They have all that money; they could really do it right. Look at (Errol) Flynn.

I don’t remember one thing I learned in school.

I don’t believe in wasting time. My goal is to win the World Chess Championship; to beat the Russians. I take this very seriously.

I usually never stay at the board after a game. Especially against Spassky. I made a dumb suggestion and he refuted it instantly! I know I’m going to have to play him some day and it was really stupid to look like such a jerk in front of him.

Too many times, people don’t try their best. They don’t have the keen spirit; the winning spirit. And once you make it you’ve got to guard your reputation – every day go in like an unknown to prove yourself. That’s why I don’t clown around.

The main idea behind any opening is to get a strong pawn center and give your pieces a lot of scope so that you cramp your opponent’s position and can attack weaknesses in his game.

A good journalist’s first priority should be to separate propaganda from fact – but sometimes its very hard to do that.

The music business is a weird business. Sometimes licensing doesn’t happen because some business component that you never knew about stops it.

Sometimes you work with somebody you’ve never heard of because you just feel like working.

No matter how useful we may be, sometimes it takes us a while to recognize our own value.

Being a comedian is an incredible thing, but it can be scary sometimes.

I’m not afraid to fail. Sometimes when you lose, you win. Sometimes when you win, you lose.

There’s not even any leaving. What we see are flowers in the sky, the moon in the water. As for the meditative powers of Zen masters like Hsu-yun, sometimes it’s useful to meditate and sometimes it isn’t.

Sometimes we had to improvise. I hate to improvise because I felt like I couldn’t find words.