In chess, as a purely ...

In chess, as a purely intellectual game, where randomness is excluded, - for someone to play against himself is absurd ... It is as paradoxical, as attempting to jump over his own shadow.
In chess, as a purely intellectual game, where randomness is excluded, - for someone to play against himself is absurd ... It is as paradoxical, as attempting to jump over his own shadow.
 Stefan Zweig

More phrases

If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.
What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult.
We are masters of the unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out.
I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.
A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

Quotes from the same author

Hearing, seeing and understanding each other, humanity from one end of the earth to the other now lives simultaneously, omnipresent like a god thanks to its own creative ability. And, thanks to its victory over space and time, it would now be splendidly united for all time, if it were not confused again and again by that fatal delusion which causes humankind to keep on destroying this grandiose unity and to destroy itself with the same resources which gave it power over the elements.
 Stefan Zweig
One never gets to know a person's character better than by watching his behavior during decisive moments.... It is always only danger which forces the most deeply hidden strengths and abilities of a human being to come forth.
 Stefan Zweig
Again and again, faith in a possible satisfaction of the human race breaks through at the very moments of most zealous discord because humankind will never be able to live and work without this consoling delusion of its ascent into morality, without this dream of final and ultimate accord.
 Stefan Zweig
Of course, in the reality of history, the Machiavellian view which glorifies the principle of violence has been able to dominate.Not the compromising conciliatory politics of humaneness, not the Erasmian, but rather the politics of vested power which firmly exploits every opportunity, politics in the sense of the "Principe," has determined the development of European history ever since.
 Stefan Zweig
It is a blessing not yet to have acquired that over-keen, diagnostic, misanthropic eye, and to be able to look at people and things trustfully when one first sees them.
 Stefan Zweig