Mental Challenge Quotes

In tennis you're on an island. Of all the games men and women play, tennis is the closest to solitary confinement.

Fighting is very physical and extreme and you're very vulnerable. It's a very mental type of thing.

It's hard to be so mentally competitive and when you're not competing you try to turn it off but it doesn't work like that. I don't think you can just turn it off, I think you still find ways to be competitive - if it's playing a video game, if it's playing cards.

Chess is an art and not a spectator sport.

Chess is not for timid souls.

Film is not as exhilarating, not as physically, mentally, or spiritually challenging, as theatre.

because the hardest boss a man can ever have is himself.

I think most amateurs dread playing a 180-plus-yard par 3 even more than a hard par 4. Part of it is psychological: You think you should be getting a breather, distance-wise, and instead, you get hit with a long iron or hybrid shot over trouble.

I think the reason that I like so many different games is because I like the way my brain works when I'm playing games. It's more fun.

Golf is deceptively simple and endlessly complicated; it satisfies the soul and frustrates the intellect. It is at the same time rewarding and maddening - and it is without a doubt the greatest game mankind has ever invented.

Golf is a very, very frustrating game.

I wish something on T.V. would trouble me. Then maybe I would watch it.

Never have a battle of wits with an unarmed person.

My wife thinks she's better than me at puzzles. I haven't given in on that one yet.

Philosophy is like trying to open a safe with a combination lock: each little adjustment of the dials seems to achieve nothing, only when everything is in place does the door open.

You have to lose to win a silver medal, so that's always the tough thing to wrap your head around.

Thinking has become a superfluous exercise... purely internal, without compelling force, more or less a game.

Chess is a lot of fun for me. Football is a physical game, and in chess you can just beat someone mentally - you outwit somebody, outmaneuver them, think ahead of them.

The best thing I've ever heard another player say is, 'I hate playing against you.'

It always takes awfully long time to understand unbelievably simple things.

[Golf]is deceptively simple, endlessly complicated. A child can play it well, and a grown man can never master it. Any single round of it is full of unexpected triumphs and perfect shots that end in disaster. It is almost a science, yet it is a puzzle without an answer. It is gratifying and tantalizing, precise and unpredictable. It requires complete concentration and total relaxation. It satisfies the soul and frustrates the intellect. It is at the same time, rewarding and maddening. And it is without doubt the greatest game mankind has ever invented.

Addressing a golf ball would seem to be a simple matter; that is, to the uninitiated who cannot appreciate that a golf ball can hold more terrors than a spacious auditorium packed with people.

Chess holds its master in its own bonds, shackling the mind and brain so that the inner freedom of the very strongest must suffer.

I want to be challenged, I want to keep challenging myself - whether or not it's changing yourself physically or just pushing yourself to a certain extreme. I get bored quite easily so I like to keep my mind entertained by challenging myself.

You can have fun, but you also have to put on your thinking cap every day.