Yes, without knowing the world of chess or morphy it is difficult to understand the quote.
In his defense I don't think morphy intended for people outside the chess world as a general statement.
Indeed. I didn't mean to attack Morphy, I just interpreted the quote on its own, thinking it was made by some random person (in different places in the thread people had quoted various writers etc. not necessarily great chess players).
You took a quote out of context, then admitted it later.
And yet you still claim that your point is correct if quote is taken out of context.
Its shifting goalpost fallacy.
I didn't take a quote out of context, the context was not provided. There is no a priori expectation that somebody should read a Wikipedia page to find out the missing context behind a quote.
> Its shifting goalpost fallacy.
There's no fallacy here. I have my opinion, I stand by it regardless of the quote's context. I understand that Morphy didn't mean what I thought he meant. It's just that my opinion on the usefulness of chess is still the same.
In context the quote has different connotations. However, having taken it at face value, I stand by my comment.
Nothing in the Morphy quote explicitly addresses the technicalities of becoming a world class chess player.
In general playing chess well means something else to the general public than to a GM level player. My comment was made having the former interpretation in mind - Morphy was obviously talking from his (very different) point of view.