Every country has its own mafia. In Russia, the mafia has its own country. - Garry Kasparov

My life experience prepared me to identify evil at an early age. Not my life as the chess player. Not even as the youngest world champion in history. No. My relevant experience is where I was born and raised, in what Ronald Reagan accurately called the “evil empire,” the USSR. As a young star in the chess-crazed Soviet Union in the ’70s and ’80s, I had many privileges my compatriots did not. I could travel to the West outside of the Iron Curtain, where it was obvious to me very quickly that they were the free world and we were not, despite what communist propaganda told us.

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.

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