The separation of Strategy and Tactics is like the separation between Space and Time. There really isn't a difference, but it sure makes it easier to talk about them. – Jason Varsoke

So what is chess strategy anyway? And what is the difference between strategy and tactics? The following skills are essential for success in chess: you have to be able exactly calculate variations, quickly find combinations, correctly estimate a position and make a plan of a game. The calculating and combinational abilities belong to tactics, whereas the skill of assessing the resulting positions and making of appropriate plans are the essence of strategy. – Aleksey Bartashinkov

Intuition and profound ideas win chess games at the highest level, not counting. – Garry Kasparov

You can only win a duel by choosing a weapon that suits you. Don't let yourself be dazzled by anyone else's armory. You can and must go your own way. – Grigory Sanakoev

There are many players who have a good command of the art of accurate combinations, but who will never reach master strength, for they lack the ability to conduct the entire game on the basis of a correct plan laid out in advance. – Ludek Pachman

Strategy is the most fundamental part of chess.  Strategy means systematic action based on a correct understanding of the game, implementing a plan aimed at weakening and – in the end – destroying the opponent’s position. – Alexander Raetsky

When they played against masters, the GMs always maintained the tension, maintained the tension, maintained the tension, until eventually the master broke and released it.  In their games against experts, the masters did the same – always maintained the tension.  The experts had no clue what was going on.  The reason for maintaining the tension is that it requires your opponent to consider more possibilities with every move.  He must ask himself, ‘will he open the game, close it, or maintain the tension?’  Each of those alternatives requires a different response.  This makes things much harder for your opponent.  The weaker player will always release the tension, because he thinks this will make his life simpler and easier.  His problem is that he’s only half right.  Life does get simpler but it doesn’t get any easier.  In fact, it gets harder. – Rusty Potter

Let's be honest about our common human failings.  I've been a world-class Grand Master for decades, and I forget things about chess.  A chess player's knowledge of the fundamental patterns and concepts can be compared to a city's water reservoir.  We always want to add to the pool to increase our resources, but, at the same time, we realize that water - like some of our chess knowledge - is sure to evaporate. – Lev Alburt

It would be wrong to say that a creatively concrete approach to the position lessens the influence of the rules of chess or contradicts them.  The whole point is that in any given position, the contradiction of any rules (or generalities) occurs only at the price of the reaffirmation and victory of other ones. Chess dogmatism does not occur only when: 1) established rules are followed without regard for circumstances, without consideration of all the concrete peculiarities of the position; it also occurs when: 2) the evaluation of a particular position is made primarily on the basis of only the obvious, the already known and established rules and generalizations. – Isaac Lipnitsky

In our day too, there are some authors who assert that the dynamic approach characteristic of modern chess has in effect made general rules and principles useless for the purpose of making decisions in the majority of concrete positions. This point of view has probably arisen at least partly from the realization that, when we are playing the game, we are in fact occupied with concrete analysis of the position, and almost never recall those abstract principles. So why do we need them at all? A thorough acquaintance with the general principles, techniques and methods enriches and sharpens our intuition. In the course of play, our feelings suggest moves, which correspond to the principles (which we examined earlier), which are active in the position; the analysis of these possibilities or those ideas helps us to guess the proper line to take, to find the concrete solution. And the more “learned” the player, other things being equal, the more successfully and surely his intuition will operate. – Mark Dvoretsky

The most important principle by which one should be guided in the middlegame is the principle of harmonious action of the pieces.  A free position with a loose arrangement of the pieces, which cannot be brought to harmonize with each other in the foreseeable future, is a bad position.  In the full judgment of a position, the strength, the maneuvering capability and the harmonious interaction of the pieces must be considered. – Jose Raul Capablanca