Explore more quotes by Edsger Dijkstra

"The students that, like the wild animal being prepared for its tricks in the circus called "life", expects only training as sketched above, will be severely disappointed: by his standards he will learn next to nothing."

Being, Nothing, Students, Training

"The ability of discerning high quality unavoidably implies the ability of identifying shortcomings."

Quality, Ability

"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim."

Computer, Question

"The traditional mathematician recognizes and appreciates mathematical elegance when he sees it. I propose to go one step further, and to consider elegance an essential ingredient of mathematics: if it is clumsy, it is not mathematics."

Elegance, Mathematics

"The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense."

Mind, Teaching

"Why has elegance found so little following? That is the reality of it. Elegance has the disadvantage, if that's what it is, that hard work is needed to achieve it and a good education to appreciate it."

Education, Work, Elegance, Hard work

"Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability."

Simplicity,

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

Mathematicians, Mathematics, Programming

"Mathematicians are like managers - they want improvement without change."

Change, Improvement, Managers, Mathematicians

"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."

Mistake, Future, Language, Perfection

Exlpore more Mathematics quotes

"The study of mathematics, like the Nile, begins in minuteness but ends in magnificence."

Charles Caleb Colton, English Writer

Mathematics, Magnificence, Study

"It is hard to know what you are talking about in mathematics, yet no one questions the validity of what you say. There is no other realm of discourse half so queer."

James Newman, American Astronaut

Mathematics, Questions, Talking, Validity

"The infinite in mathematics is alway unruly unless it is properly treated."

James Newman, American Astronaut

Mathematics, Infinite

"The Theory of Groups is a branch of mathematics in which one does something to something and then compares the result with the result obtained from doing the same thing to something else, or something else to the same thing."

James Newman, American Astronaut

Mathematics, Result, Theory

"I have in later years taken to Euclid, Whitehead, Bertrand Russell, in an elemental way."

Carl Sandburg, American Poet

Mathematics, Years

"Mathematics allows for no hypocrisy and no vagueness."

Stendhal, French Writer

Mathematics, Hypocrisy

"In mathematics we have long since drawn the rein, and given over a hopeless race."

Charles Babbage, English Mathematician

Mathematics, Race

"The longer mathematics lives the more abstract - and therefore, possibly also the more practical - it becomes."

E. T. Bell, Scottish Mathematician

Mathematics,

""Obvious" is the most dangerous word in mathematics."

E. T. Bell, Scottish Mathematician

Mathematics, Word

"I was so pleased to be at university to do physics and mathematics."

John Henry Carver, Australian Physicist

Mathematics, Physics, University