The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim. – Edsger Dijkstra
Why has elegance found so little following? That is the reality of it. Elegance has the disadvantage, if thats what it is, that hard work is needed to achieve it and a good education to appreciate it. – Edsger Dijkstra
It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration. – Edsger Dijkstra
If debugging is the process of removing bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in. – Edsger Dijkstra
From Jefferson to Jackson to Lincoln to FDR to Reagan, every great president inspires enormous affection and enormous hostility. Well all be much saner, I think, if we remember that history is full of surprises and things that seemed absolutely certain one day are often unimaginable the next. – Jon Meacham