Go Quotes

The ancient game of Go is awesome in the simplicity of its rules and the complexity of its strategy. A few comments about it, from [1] and [2]:

• "... the rules of Go are so elegant, organic, and rigorously logical that if intelligent life forms exist elsewhere in the universe, they almost certainly play Go." - Edward Lasker
• "Go is to Western chess what philosophy is to double-entry accounting." - Trevanian, Shibumi
• "Go uses the most elemental materials and concepts — line and circle, wood and stone, black and white — combining them with simple rules to generate subtle strategies and complex tactics that stagger the imagination." - Iwamoto Kaoru
• "The developed structures at each point in the game are the past, and the possibilities existing in that situation are the future. Together they constitute the present. Properly understanding the past and future in this sense is the essence of good timing." - W. Cobb
• To excel at Go requires "... the tactic of the soldier, the exactness of the mathematician, the imagination of the artist, the inspiration of the poet, the calm of the philosopher, and the greatest intelligence." - Zhang Yunqi, Weiqi de faxian
• "The difference between a stone played on one intersection rather than on an adjacent neighbor is insignificant to the uninitiated. The master of Go, though, sees it as all the difference between a flower and a cinder block." - Dave Lowry, The Challenge of Go

(cf Complexity from Simplicity (1999-08-05), Go Words (1999-08-29), Zar Story (2000-01-16), War and Checkers (2005-05-25), Thinking in Systems (2017-11-03), ...) - ^z - 2018-05-14