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"Against Alekhine you never knew what to expect. Against Capablanca you knew what to expect, but you cannot prevent it" M. Vidmar

 

Jose Raul Capablanca

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Morphy and Capablanca had enormous talent, they are two of my favorites. Steinitz was very great too. Alekhine was great, but I am not a big fan of his. Maybe it’s just my taste. I’ve studied his games a lot, but I much prefer Capablanca and Morphy. Alekhine had a rather heavy style, Capablanca was much more brilliant and talented, he had a real light touch. Everyone I’ve spoken to who saw Capablanca play still speak of him with awe. If you showed him any position he would instantly tell you the right move. When I used to go to the Manhattan Chess Club back in the fifties, I met a lot of old-timers there who knew Capablanca, because he used to come around to the Manhattan club in the forties — before he died in the early forties. They spoke about Capablanca with awe. I have never seen people speak about any chess player like that, before or since. Capablanca really was fantastic. But even he had his weaknesses, especially when you play over his games with his notes he would make idiotic statements like 'I played the rest of the game perfectly.' But then you play through the moves and it is not true at all. But the thing that was great about Capablanca was that he really spoke his mind, he said what he believed was true, he said what he felt.

 

Bobby Fischer

 

[Describing playing Capablanca] It was a unique feeling of helplessness. Of course, I knew very well I was outclassed not only by him but also by all the other seven world champions against whom I have played. But at least when I played them I had the feeling (often illusory) that there was at least a chance for me, possibly to draw and even, on rare occasion, to win. In the game with Capablanca there was no such feeling. Even my first move looked a little suspect to me! — Harry Golombek "World Champions I have Met."

 

Jose Raul Capablanca

 

"Capablanca's planning of the game is so full of that freshness of his genius for position play, that every hypermodern player can only envy him." — Alexander Alekhine on his win against F.D. Yates at New York 1924.

 

Jose Raul Capablanca

 

"Could you try not aiming so much?" he asked me, still standing there. "If you hit him when you aim, it'll just be luck." He was speaking, communicating, and yet not breaking the spell. I then broke it. Quite deliberately. "How can it be luck if I aim?" I said back to him, not loud (despite the italics) but with rather more irritation in my voice than I was actually feeling. He didn't say anything for a moment but simply stood balanced on the curb, looking at me, I knew imperfectly, with love. "Because it will be," he said. "You'll be glad if you hit his marble — Ira's marble — won't you? Won't you be glad? And if you're glad when you hit somebody's marble, then you sort of secretly didn't expect too much to do it. So there'd have to be some luck in it, there'd have to be slightly quite a lot of accident in it."

 

J. D. Salinger

 

"A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.

 

Abraham Lincoln