This is the best chess quote I have ever read. Some chess players don't agree with it but they are wrong. I found the quote in the book "Bronstein on the King's Indian". The King's Indian is my favorite chess opening.

Chess is a friendly game, which is why it was invented. The main idea of each player is to capture the chief of the opposing chess army, which according to the rules of the game leads to the surrender of the opposing forces. This rule was introduced because it was thought more beautiful for a lesser army to be able to outplay and force the surrender of a superior force. If you can understand the spirit of chess this way, then you will see that the fewer men that are captured, the more noble is the victory, and this reflects a peculiarly human way of thinking.

So winning or losing is not the main idea of chess at all. A chess game is in fact a friendly exchange of intentions, hidden in individual moves. You always have the choice either of putting into action your planned move, or of first calmly preventing the intended move of the friend with whom you are playing chess in this brief, finite moment of your life.

-- David Bronstein

Wikipedia:

David Bronstein, February 19, 1924 – December 5, 2006) was a Soviet and Russian chess player. Awarded the title of International Grandmaster by FIDE in 1950, he narrowly missed becoming World Chess Champion in 1951. Bronstein was one of the world's strongest players from the mid-1940s into the mid-1970s, and was described by his peers as a creative genius and master of tactics. Also a renowned chess writer, his book Zurich International Chess Tournament 1953 is widely considered one of the greatest chess books ever written.