I’ve seen - both in myself and my competitors - how satisfaction can lead to a lack of vigilance, then to mistakes and missed opportunities.
Interpretation
Satisfaction can make us complacent, resulting in errors and lost chances.
In this quote, Garry Kasparov emphasizes the danger of complacency that accompanies satisfaction. He suggests that when we become too content with our current state, whether personally or in competition, we may lose our edge and fail to remain alert, which can lead to costly mistakes and the inability to seize important opportunities.
In practice
In a business meeting discussing strategies for innovation.
There is no one that can share your responsibility. It it is your responsibility you must carry it on and you must be responsible for your actions. At the end of the day we all are being challenged, sooner or later, by our destiny. And it's up to us to make all the difference in this life. If not you, who else?
Setbacks and losses are both inevitable and essential if you're going to improve and become a good, even great, competitor. The art is in avoiding catastrophic losses in the key battles.
Botvinnik tried to take the mystery out of Chess, always relating it to situations in ordinary life. He used to call chess a typical inexact problem similar to those which people are always having to solve in everyday life.
One does not succeed by sticking to convention. When your opponent can easily anticipate every move you make, your strategy deteriorates and becomes commoditized.
I think that it's a vital moment now for Russian democracy to convince people that it's only our actions, our joined actions and protests that could force Kremlin to reconsider its plans to abolish presidential elections.
I learned that fighting on the chess board could also have an impact on the political climate in the country.
Remember, people will judge you by your actions not your intentions. You may have a heart of gold but so does a hard-boiled egg.
When the aerials are down, and your spirit is covered with snows of cynicism and the ice of pessimism, then you are grown old, even at 20, but as long as your aerials are up, to catch waves of optimism, there is hope you may die young at 80.
Accepting good advice means nothing other than to strengthen one's own ability.
Study the past if you want to define the future.
Insults are the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong.
As a trial lawyer in front of a jury and an author of true-crime books, credibility has always meant everything to me. My only master and my only mistress are the facts and objectivity. I have no others.
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