Garry Kasparov

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[Vladimir] Putin's Russia is only indirectly concerned with the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan as a means of maintaining its sphere of influence. I doubt that Russia will meddle. Moreover, I'm quite sure that Ilham Aliyev won't decide to carry out any serious action - it's not in his interest. He's learned his lesson very well - threaten to take action but never act on such words.
- Garry Kasparov
Collection: Mean
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We don't have a choice. A united democratic Eurasian continent welded together by common economic interests is our only hope and contribution to stability in the world. If we fail, I fear that Russia in its present form is in for the most serious of upheavals - the outcome of which is extremely unpredictable.
- Garry Kasparov
Collection: Russia
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I would not draw definitive conclusions from that. If we look at South and North Korea, it is pretty hard to believe that we're dealing with the same people. Half of the people are forced to live in a concentration camp; the other have created one of the most dynamic economies in the world.
- Garry Kasparov
Collection: Believe
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Once I spoke about this subject among a group of English intellectuals. One of them was a professor on Roman Law at one of the leading British universities. I asked him,what was the official language of the Byzantine Empire? He said, maybe sometime in the sixth or the seventh century.The Justinian Codex, the rule of law in the Byzantine Empire which was produced by Emperor Justinian, it was written in Latin.And he looked at me ,he knew that I knew already that the only original copy was found in the beginning of the sixteenth century.
- Garry Kasparov
Collection: Latin
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When considering the Islamic world, Turkey is the best example of a country where democracy irreversibly gained a foothold despite religious and cultural traditions still respected today. With some reservation, this can be said about Pakistan, too, where we can observe dynamic political processes going on [and] governments change as a result of elections. In my opinion, it is up to the ruling elite to initiate cardinal changes.
- Garry Kasparov
Collection: Country
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The Greeks according to official history used letters for hundreds, for tens, and ones.It was extremely complicated. If you talk about Archimedes, you should use Greek letters.
- Garry Kasparov
Collection: Greek
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At any time the atmosphere in the West could change, for which determined political will I do not see at the moment is a necessary prerequisite. From the sidelines, it seems that he's caught up in his own exorbitant ambitions.
- Garry Kasparov
Collection: Ambition
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The only game [Vladimir] Putin can play is to establish a lifelong dictatorship in the country, at first de facto and finally also de jure. In this case, [Dmitri] Medvedev is an interim figure bound to assist Putin in his plan to guarantee a smooth transition to a new term in office.
- Garry Kasparov
Collection: Country
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Chess is a unique battlefield for human minds and computers - human intuition, our creativity, fantasy, our logic, versus the brute force of calculation and a very small portion of accumulated knowledge infused by other human beings. So in chess we can compare these two incompatible things and probably make projections into our future. Is there danger that the human mind will be overshadowed by the power of computers, or we can still survive?
- Garry Kasparov
Collection: Creativity
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A grandmaster must memorize thousands of chess duels in his head, as these are for him what words of the mother tongue are to the ordinary people and what notes are to a musician.
- Garry Kasparov
Collection: Mother
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I am lucky, .. that the popular sport in the Soviet Union was chess and not baseball.
- Garry Kasparov
Collection: Sports
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Thanks to the Polgars the adjective 'men's' before events and the 'affirmative action' women's titles such as Woman Grandmaster have become anachronisms.
- Garry Kasparov
Collection: Women
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There can be no finer example of the inspiring powers of competition to shatter the status quo than Hungary's Judit Polgar.
- Garry Kasparov
Collection: Women
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Dictatorships can exist with free markets - not that China is really a free market - especially in poor countries where the regime insists that it's a choice between food and liberty, a false choice. But increasing affluence will inevitably result in political pressure.
- Garry Kasparov
Collection: Country
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With this mistake I deprived myself of the possibility to make a contribution to the treasury of chess art.
- Garry Kasparov
Collection: Art
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I've seen up close the benefits and drawbacks of kids working with super-strong chess programs in their training, and they definitely think differently than past generations thanks to this alien influence. While we are making our machines more intelligent, they are also changing how we think.
- Garry Kasparov
Collection: Kids
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Ratings are king and the money keeps flowing, and partisanship is so strong today that people rely on a few sources absolutely instead of thinking critically. So even being a cheerleader for a gameshow-host president with no respect for the rule of law or America's reputation in the world may not be a career-ending move.
- Garry Kasparov
Collection: Strong
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Our skin, our borders, all seem petty compared to alien races and the scale of galaxies. Nobody in the Star Wars universe cares about white or black humans, it seems, and what meaning could physical appearance possibly have when there are sentient beings that look like lobsters or like Jabba the Hutt? Unfortunately, in the real world, such hopeful sentiments are regularly refuted by our stubborn insistence on always finding someone to discriminate against.
- Garry Kasparov
Collection: Real
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I don't think that nature envisaged an insurmountable mechanism that would hinder any country from taking the path of democratic development.
- Garry Kasparov
Collection: Country
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I believe more than ever, machines will put new challenges, and that means we'll have to be more creative and more human, because that's the way to make the difference.
- Garry Kasparov
Collection: Believe
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We have again a strange gap. We have the big scientific discoveries around the second, third century BC. Then we have an invention of the so-called Arab system, the positional system of counting with zero dated to the eighth or ninth century.
- Garry Kasparov
Collection: Zero
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That machines will surpass us in intelligence is inevitable. What it means is unknowable. Will they be sentient? What will they care about in the sense that determines our human motivations? All the theorizing by the experts and non-experts makes for interesting conversations and dramatic headlines, but it's more likely we will be surprised by how our technology develops and how it is used, as we so often are.
- Garry Kasparov
Collection: Motivation
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In Syria, Vladimir pUTIN sees the chance to make millions of refugees and weaponise them. The US has to take a lead in defending the values of the free world.
- Garry Kasparov
Collection: World
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Question the status quo at all times, especially when things are going well.
- Garry Kasparov
Collection: Status Quo
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With some reservation, it can be said that certain democratic elements are present in Georgia as well; but it is very clear that the government has to pronounce its explicit wish to resign before something is going to happen. On the western front, only Belarus is an exception.
- Garry Kasparov
Collection: Government
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I dropped the King's Indian in 1997 after one too many bad experiences against Kramnik.
- Garry Kasparov
Collection: Kings
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In general there is something puzzling about the fact that the most renowned figures in chess - Morphy, Pillsbury, Capablanca and Fischer - were born in America.
- Garry Kasparov
Collection: America
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Unfortunately, in Russia this "Asian mentality,"still comes to the fore. But at the same time, it is obvious that there is a certain orientation toward the West. In the end, this is a fragile balancing act between the Asian manner of governance and high living standards that are guaranteed through Western technology.
- Garry Kasparov
Collection: Technology
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Kortchnoi's heritage is many-faceted - over the decades he has several times corrected and changed his style. But the main thing has invariably remained his search for chess truth.
- Garry Kasparov
Collection: Truth
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For us to make sure that we have full lives, meaningful lives, we will have to elevate our unique human qualities. And I think we know now, we can see clearly what makes us different from machines. And that's why the future is enhanced humanity.
- Garry Kasparov
Collection: Meaningful
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[Romans] never made any improvements on the cavalry. And amazingly, when you read the sources, they couldn't make it because stirrups were not known in Europe. For hundreds of years, the Romans couldn't make a cavalry which proved to be extremely effective.
- Garry Kasparov
Collection: Years
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Somehow, AI is playing an important role of breaking up the ice of complacency. We have a comfortable life, we just don't want to take risks. AI is threatening too many comfortable jobs to make people think about taking risks again.
- Garry Kasparov
Collection: Thinking
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Intelligent machines will continue that mechanization process, taking over the more menial aspects of cognition and elevating our mental lives towards creativity, curiosity, beauty, and joy. These are what truly makes us human.
- Garry Kasparov
Collection: Creativity
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Besides problems of traditional societies, the Caucasus has to cope with quite a few unsettled territorial conflicts that also nurture authoritarian governmental structures.
- Garry Kasparov
Collection: Problem
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There's the blazing Russian Caucasus, with an ongoing war all against all, which is not to be neglected.
- Garry Kasparov
Collection: War
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Even well-known historians like Edward Gibbon are talking about how the soldiers of the 18th century were not able to do the same type of exercise [like Romans].
- Garry Kasparov
Collection: Exercise
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I reckon that there won't be an intervention in the near future, because Georgia's military adventure revealed the weakness of the Russian army.
- Garry Kasparov
Collection: Military
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I can't think of a scenario under which [Vladimir Putin] would gradually resign from power. For him and those around him, power became a source of unlimited enrichment. A loss of power would be tantamount to an annihilation of the economic success that has been achieved so far.
- Garry Kasparov
Collection: Loss
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We should simply accept the fact that the way machines make decisions is different, and rather look at the result. If machines are providing results that we are looking for, you would mind how much human understanding was used in the process. And more likely we should look for the way of combining human skills and machine skills. And that, I believe, is the future role of humanity, is just to make sure it will be using this immense power of brute force of calculation for our benefit.
- Garry Kasparov
Collection: Believe
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The slightest sign of stability is used by local authoritarian leaders to bargain for the sympathies of Western countries that are, for the sake of a balanced relationship, bound to turn a blind eye to obvious, blatant violations of human rights and the deconstruction of democratic institutions in these countries.
- Garry Kasparov
Collection: Country
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If we look to the south, to Iran, which cannot be "accused" of excess democratic zeal - it goes without saying that the unstable situation does not prepare the ground for a democratic development.
- Garry Kasparov
Collection: Iran
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Constructs like race will decline in relevance in a roboticized world. That how well one human subset or community - a race, a nationality, a religion - is doing will be secondary to how well humanity in general is doing in face of the robot revolution.
- Garry Kasparov
Collection: Community
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I am between the Tories and the Lib Dems. I am fiscally conservative. I'm for strong foreign policy, but socially very liberal. I am not religious. That makes me feel uncomfortable with American Republicans. I don't feel at home anywhere, really. Labour under Tony Blair was not something I would associate myself with, but I didn't have a big problem with it. I have to make a choice between fiscal and the role of the state and social freedom.
- Garry Kasparov
Collection: Religious
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Many people think they are too refined, or too rational, to entertain a real sense of wonder in themselves or in others. This is preposterous to me, since the natural world is full of endless wonders, both on Earth and especially in space, no matter how you think it was created.
- Garry Kasparov
Collection: Real
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As for the eastern part of the former Soviet Union, the picture is rather uniform. Authoritarian structures prevail to differing extents. But we can still determine certain regularities, and the role of Russia is not to be underestimated. It is clear that we would have the same situation in Tajikistan and, let's say, Uzbekistan without the direct influence of Russia.
- Garry Kasparov
Collection: Russia
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Everyone is concerned about his niche, his name, and wants to adapt the concept to so-called national characteristics. But at the end of the day, it's all the same.
- Garry Kasparov
Collection: Names
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[Vladimir] Putin intended to provide for a broad safety corridor [for the Olympic Games]. That's why Abkhazia was a more important and desired goal of Russian aggression against Georgia than South Ossetia, which merely served as a pretext. Concerns mainly centered on the Crimea.
- Garry Kasparov
Collection: Games
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The situation in the [North Caucasus ] region can easily get out of control if the capital inflow is interrupted. It is apparent, even when leaving democratic institutions and values aside for a moment, that [Vladimir] Putin's regime has led the country down a blind alley. Our task is to usher in a shift of paradigms, a new foundation.
- Garry Kasparov
Collection: Country
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I don't really like discussions about a supposed Russian national character.
- Garry Kasparov
Collection: Character