Having spent 200 hours on the ...

Having spent 200 hours on the above, the young player, even if he possesses no special talent for chess, is likely to be among those two or three thousand chessplayers [who play on a par with a master]. There are, however, a quarter of a million chessplayers who annually spend no fewer than 200 hours on chess without making any progress. Without going into any further calculations, I can assert with a high degree of certainty that nowadays we achieve only a fraction of what we are capable of achieving.
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 Emanuel Lasker

Quotes from the same author

On a motif such as was indicated by Reti one cannot build the plan of a whole well contested game; it is too meagre, too thin, too puny for such an end. Reti's explanations, wherever they are concerned with an analysis which covers a few moves, are correct and praiseworthy. But when he abandons the foundations of analysis in order to draw too bold, too general a conclusion, his arguments prove to be mistaken.
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 Emanuel Lasker
When you see a good move, look for a better one.
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 Emanuel Lasker
The laws of chess do not permit a free choice: you have to move whether you like it or not.
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 Emanuel Lasker
The combination player thinks forward; he starts from the given position, and tries the forceful moves in his mind
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 Emanuel Lasker
The game gives us a satisfaction that Life denies us. And for the Chess player, the success which crowns his work, the great dispeller of sorrows, is named 'combination'.
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 Emanuel Lasker