It was February 1978, in <Chess Life and Review>, in an interview between Spassky and Mednis, on the eve of the second Korchnoi-Spassky match.

<1972 Fischer Match
Spassky says that the most important factor in a match is the condition of a player's nerves, since without good nerves it is impossible to properly concentrate. For chess and personal reasons, his nerves both before and during his 1972 Fischer match were in extremely poor condition. (His polite, reserved behavior during the match effectively concealed the condition of his nerves — EM.) The real breaking point came as early as Game 3 (which at Fischer's insistence was played in a small, essentially private room — EM). When early in the game Bobby shouted "Shut up" at the chief referee, GM Lothar Schmid, Boris's nerves came completely unglued. He now feels that the only way to steady his composure would have been to say at that moment, "I resign the game, as it is obviously impossible to play for the world championship under such conditions." This action, Boris feels, would have steadied him for the rest of the match.>

I'm surprised this is controversial, I thought it was fairly well known that Fischer and Schmid had had a little set-to early on in that game. The story is only barely referenced in this interview, precisely because it was fairly well known and didn't need any great explanation.

Here's another case,supposedly from Ramanujam's diary.

9-15 = 4-10
9-15+(25/4) = 4-10+(25/4 )
9+(25/4)-15 = 4+(25/4)-10
(this is just like : a square + b square - two a b = (a-b)square. )

Here a = 3, b=5/2 for L.H.S and a =2, b=5/2 for R.H.S.

So it can be expressed as follows:

(3-5/2)(3-5/ 2) = (2-5/2)(2-5/ 2)

Taking positive square root on both sides:

3 - 5/2 = 2 - 5/2

Interesting, but Hardy was extremely modest about his achievements and contribution. In the above example he ranks Littlewood above himself.

However, I think it is generally accepted that Hardy had a greater contribution than Littlewood. May this story serve as evidence.

<There is a story (related in the Miscellany) that at a conference Littlewood met a German mathematician who said he was most interested to discover that Littlewood really existed, as he had always assumed that Littlewood was a name used by Hardy for lesser work which he did not want to put out under his own name; Littlewood apparently roared with laughter.[citation needed] There are versions of this story involving both Norbert Wiener and Edmund Landau, who, it is claimed, "so doubted the existence of Littlewood that he made a special trip to Great Britain to see the man with his own eyes".[2]>

All "the greatest ever" discussions are rather silly, and cannot be take very seriously; even though, they can be interesting from debating/logic point of view or educational from information point of view. Unfortunately, trolls love to feed of those discussion, so they often don't get far.

In any case, I do think that there is a difference between longevity in mathematics and chess. In chess Longevity is a valid argument for 'greatest ever' because it reduces the probability that previous results were due to chance.

As an extreme example, A guessed B's opening preparation exactly, and thanks to that won their match. Now if A was beating everyone for 20 years, than the likelihood of A's wins being due to guessing is extremely small.

Anyway, in Economics long run is not associated with a specific time, and I don't think we need a specific time length for chess discussions.

You are spot on right about Morphy. His games were enough to change chess as we see it today, and I am sure every beginner will always be first pointed to Morphy games because they are very instructive. However, in terms of achievements, in sense of winning tournaments his results are not that impressive, as for most part he played weaker opposition. If Morphy stayed around kept dominating, people like Steinitz, that would've added him plus points in the "greatest ever discussions".