Quotes by Edsger W. Dijkstra

Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability.

Simplicity is a great virtue but it requires hard work to achieve it and education to appreciate it. And to make matters worse: complexity sells better.

How do we convince people that in programming simplicity and clarity —in short: what mathematicians call "elegance"— are not a dispensable luxury, but a crucial matter that decides between success and failure?

Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence!