92 Quotes by Edsger W. Dijkstra

The question of whether computers can think is like the question of whether submarines can swim.

APL is a mistake, carried through to perfection. It is the language of the future for the programming techniques of the past: it creates a new generation of coding bums.

Simplicity and elegance are unpopular because they require hard work and discipline to achieve and education to be appreciated.

When building sand castles on the beach, we can ignore the waves but should watch the tide.

Programming is one of the most difficult branches of applied mathematics; the poorer mathematicians had better remain pure mathematicians.

The prisoner falls in love with his chains.

Too few people recognize that the high technology so celebrated today is essentially a mathematical technology.

If you want more effective programmers, you will discover that they should not waste their time debugging, they should not introduce the bugs to start with.

I mentioned the non-competitive spirit explicitly, because these days, excellence is a fashionable concept. But excellence is a competitive notion, and that is not what we are heading for: we are heading for perfection.