Political Activists

"We must decide what we value and decide what is worth fighting for and then–the most important part–we must fight for it."

"Communism is like an autoimmune disorder; it doesn't do the killing itself, but it weakens the system so much that the victim is left helpless and unable to fight off anything else."

"Anatoly Karpov and I donated the prize fund from our 1986 world championship match to the Chernobyl victim relief fund."

"The United States is a very different thing. It's a continent-spanning nation built from scratch by millions of immigrants from every part of the world on top of its native population."

"Each victory pulls the victor down slightly and makes it harder to put in maximum effort to improve further."

"Somehow people always forget that it's much easier to install a dictator than to remove one."

""I think we're making theory or even making history because we're opening not even a new chapter but basically a new book on the game of chess. That's why I think all players are excited." —September 2018"

""Random chess lets me enjoy myself and get publicity for chess without having to disrupt my life for months of preparation." August 2018"

"People ask about dictators, "Why?" But dictators themselves ask, "Why not?""

"The leaders of the free world keep lowering their standards and authoritarians keep taking more territory. Eventually people wake up and ask why Putin murders in the UK or hacks in the US. Why wouldn’t he? You didn’t stop him before."

"Allow dissent & free media for 6 months in Russia and see what happens. Putin would never risk it because he’s terrified of his own people and the truth, like every dictator."

"We have to always look ahead enough moves to be well prepared, even for victory!"

"Millions like me in Russia want a free press, the rule of law, social justice, and free and fair elections. My new job is to fight for those people and to fight for these fundamental rights."

"Caissa, the goddess of chess, had punished me for my conservative play, for betraying my nature."

"Solving new problems is what keeps us moving forward as individuals and as a society, so don't back down."

"Question the status quo at all times, especially when things are going well."

"If you're already in a fight, you want the first blow to be the last and you had better be the one to throw it."

"I like to say that the attacker always has the advantage."

"In chess, bigamy is acceptable but monarchy is absolute."

"We think about time as something not to waste, not as something to invest."

"Everyone, at any age, has talents that aren't fully developed-even those who reach the top of their profession."

"For inspiration I look to those great players who consistently found original ways to shock their opponents. None did this better than the eighth world champion, Mikhail Tal. The "Magician of Riga" rose to become champion in 1960 at age twenty-three and became famous for his aggressive, volatile play."

"You must also have a sense of when to stop."

"This obligation to move can be a burden to a player without strategic vision."

"It's not enough to be talented. It's not enough to work hard and to study late into the night. You must also become intimately aware of the methods you use to reach your decisions."

"Having spent a lifetime analyzing the game of chess and comparing the capacity of computers to the capacity of the human brain, I've often wondered, where does our success come from? The answer is synthesis, the ability to combine creativity and calculation, art and science, into a whole that is much greater than the sum of its parts. Chess is a unique cognitive nexus, a place where art and science come together in the human mind, and are then refined and improved by experience."

""Of course, if people do not want to do any work then it is better to start the game from a random position." December 2001"

"Every country has its own mafia. In Russia, the mafia has its own country."

"My nature is that I have to excite myself with a big challenge."

"In conclusion, if you want to unravel the multitude of secrets of chess then don't begrudge the time."

"The public must come to see that chess is a violent sport. Chess is mental torture."

"Before the invasion of Iraq, we could project overwhelming power in any part of the world. We cannot do so any more because we are bogged down in Iraq. Iran and North Korea are moving ahead with their nuclear programs at full speed and our hand in dealing with them has been greatly weakened."

"Alex told me that for many years, his father had not been eager to advertise his Judaism because “this was something he was almost killed for.” But he had always “identified firstly as a Jew,” and his philanthropy was ultimately an expression of his Jewish identity, in that he felt a solidarity with other minority groups and also because he recognized that a Jew could only truly be safe in a world in which all minorities were protected. Explaining his father’s motives, he said, “The reason you fight for an open society is because that’s the only society that you can live in, as a Jew — unless you become a nationalist and only fight for your own rights in your own state"."

"Half the day he engages in the most ruthless financial exploitations, ruining the lives of hundreds of thousands, even millions. The other half [of the day] he just gives part of it back."

"George Soros has a long and storied track record of being all villains to all people. Nobody that rich, and that meddlesome in international affairs — through his massive, market-influencing hedge-fund bets against national currencies, or via his multi-billion dollar "Open Society" philanthropy in 50-plus countries — could avoid being fitted for devil's horns on a daily basis. ... Until very recently, you could place most of Soros' fiercest critics in categories marked "paranoid" and "anti-democratic." In 1990s Central Europe, where he and his various organizations were ubiquitous presences (at least in the cosmopolitan capital cities), reaction to Soros was a useful if crude indicator of a politician's basic orientation. ... But now, Slavic autocrats have been joined in red-faced George-bashing by two new overlapping groups: American conservatives, and hawkish friends of Israel. ... Thus we now have the spectacle of one of the world's most active and influential anti-communists (not to mention one of its most successful capitalists) being tarred as a particularly dangerous friend of Marx and Lenin."

"George Soros has made his mark as an enormously successful speculator, wise enough to largely withdraw when still way ahead of the game. The bulk of his enormous winnings is now devoted to encouraging transitional and emerging nations to become "open societies," open not only in the sense of freedom of commerce but — more important — tolerant of new ideas and different modes of thinking and behavior."

"Aside from very few exceptions like George Soros, I am not impressed by people with money... Becoming rich is not directly a moral achievement."

"[A]lthough Soros did not deliver anything meaningful in his writings, he knew how to handle randomness, by keeping a critical open mind open and changing his opinion with minimal shame ...calling himself fallible ...while others had loftier ideas about themselves. He understood Popper. Do not judge him by his writings. He lived a Popperian life."

"I discovered Karl Popper via [a] trader, perhaps the only one I have ever truly respected. ...I disagreed with his statements when it came to economics and philosophy... [H]is first book, The Alchemy of Finance... does not show much grasp of the concepts. ...One cannot infer much from a single experiment in a random environment... [H]e writes that the category... "economists" believe that things converge to equilibrium... There are plenty of economic theories that believe that departure from a price level can cause further divergence and cause cascading feedback loops. ...say, game theory (...Harsanyi and Nash) or information economics (...Stiglitz, Akerhof, and Spence)."

"I’ve been plying the craft of politics for more than thirty years now, and with my own eyes I’ve seen George Soros attempt to plunder Hungary on three separate occasions. The first time was in the early nineties, when he wanted to buy up all the country’s state debt: all of Hungary’s state debt in the hands of one person, the fate of every Hungarian in the hands of George Soros. It’s spine-chilling even thinking about the situation we managed to avoid. Gratitude and recognition are due to József Antall for preventing this from happening. And I remember 1994, when Soros wanted to plunder us a second time. He tried to acquire OTP Bank, which was then the uniquely dominant Hungarian retail bank. No less spine-chilling is the vision of almost every Hungarian’s money in the hands of one person. Gratitude and recognition are due to Gyula Horn for not allowing that to happen. Today the soaring success of OTP is proof that he was right to do so. Even young people can remember the third attempt. In 2015, people-smuggling networks disguised as human rights organisations brought hundreds of thousands of migrants to the Hungarian border. And when Europe was already straining under the weight of migration, Soros announced that he was ready to offer credit to finance the settlement of one million migrants a year. Please bear in mind that the Soros Plan, the planned settlement of foreign population groups, is still on the agenda: the operation is in progress and we must man the defences, stoutly and unwaveringly."

"Hungary was led to bankruptcy by a government of former communists pursuing liberal policy. This example strengthens the conviction that in fact there is no such thing as a liberal: a liberal is nothing more than a communist with a university degree. If we had taken their advice, right now Hungary would be in the intensive care ward, with the tubes of IMF and Brussels credit attached to every limb. And the fingers on the valves regulating the flow of credit would belong to George Soros. This is no exaggeration."

"All these countries [in East Asia] have spent 40 years trying to build up their economies and a moron like Soros comes along with a lot of money to speculate and ruin things."

"Four hundred seventy-three million to one. Those are the odds against George Soros compiling the investment record he did as manager of the Quantum Fund from 1968 through 1993. His investment record is the most unimpeachable refutation of the random walk hypothesis ever! ... History will probably remember Mr. Soros as the speculator who tilted against the Bank of England in 1992 (and freed the English people from recession). His billion dollar score is simply too compelling a story to overlook. Mr. Soros himself would probably like to be remembered as a great economist or even scientist. But I am going to remember him for something even more important, for which he does not receive the credit he deserves. He is someone who genuinely cares about the state of the human condition and tries to better it. His myriad and monumental philanthropical efforts will qualify him as one of history's great benefactors. ... He is a hands-on workaholic who materially impacts the quality of lives of people less fortunate than he. Now this, this is a sign of greatness."

"The financier George Soros has come to the reflection: 'There are collective interests that don't find expression in market values'.""

"Historically, most highly paid executives voted Republican. No more. ... George Soros was on the leading edge of this trend. Long before he became famous as one of the biggest Democratic donors in history, Soros was best known for getting rich by betting against national currencies, notably the English pound. Soros was considered such a rapacious and unethical practitioner of vulture capitalism that liberal economist Paul Krugman once accused him of intentionally trying to provoke currency crises in order to profit from them. Krugman no longer criticizes Soros, who has gone on to spend billions on behalf of liberal candidates and policy positions around the world."

"Druckenmiller could see that Soros was right: Indeed, this was the man’s genius. Druckenmiller had done the analysis, understood the politics, and seen the trigger for the trade; but Soros was the one who sensed that this was the moment to go nuclear. When you knew you were right, there was no such thing as betting too much. You piled on as hard as possible."

"I've learned many things from him, but perhaps the most significant is that it's not whether you're right or wrong, but how much money you make when you're right and how much you lose when you're wrong."

"We have a booming global economy but we don't have a global society. Markets reduce everything, including human beings and nature, to commodities. Societies need more than this to prosper — such goals as political freedom and social justice."

"I consider Xi Jinping the most dangerous enemy of open societies in the world."

"Nationalism, far from being reversed, made further headway. The biggest and most frightening setback came in India, where a democratically elected Narendra Modi is creating a Hindu nationalist state, imposing punitive measures on Kashmir – a semi-autonomous Muslim region, and threatening to deprive millions of Muslims of their citizenship."