Edsger Dijkstra Quotes

Never be lucid, never state, if you would be regarded great.

If I turn out to be particularly clear, you've probably misunderstood what I've said.

Anybody can be specific and obvious. That's always been the easy way. It's not that it's so difficult to be unspecific and less obvious; it's just that there's nothing, absolutely nothing, to be specific and obvious about.

Making a film confusing does not make it intelligent.

I am about as detailed as a shadow.

And there are no stars and that you're never really sure who's doing what and what voice is what and, you know what I mean? It's supposed to be quite elusive.

In labouring to be concise, I become obscure.

Be obscure clearly.

I spend a substantial amount of my time endeavoring to fend off questions, and worry terribly that I might end up being too clear.

I labor to be brief, and manage to be obscure.

We paint a slow picture. You can see the brushstrokes. We don't get to the point, and sometimes when we do, our readers don't notice, in fact. It's so couched in nuance, it can fly right over a person's head. 'What was that you said? I couldn't quite make it out.'

It's a murky world out there, and it's hard to figure things out sometimes.

Subtlety chases the obvious up a never-ending spiral and never quite catches it.

Clarity is not a characteristic of the human spirit.

A poet dares to be just so clear and no clearer; he approaches lucid ground warily, like a mariner who is determined not to scrape his bottom on anything solid. A poet's pleasure is to withhold a little of his meaning, to intensify by mystification. He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it. A poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring.

Don't express your ideas too clearly. Most people think little of what they understand, and venerate what they do not.

That sometimes clear ... and sometimes vague stuff ... which is ... mathematics.

But nature is always more subtle, more intricate, more elegant than what we are able to imagine.

Only mystery allows us to live, only mystery.

Things have been a mess for so many years that trying to pin down a starting point is like trying to figure out where your skin starts.

How rare it is to come across a piece of writing that is unambiguous, unqualified, and also unblurred by understatements or subtleties, and yet at the same time urbane and tolerant. It is a vice of the scientific method when applied to human affairs that it fosters hemming and hawing and a scrupulousness that easily degenerates into obscurity and meaninglessness.

The Sonnets of Shakespeare have the fascination of an autobiography, without its clarity. It is like reading an important document in a cave by the light of matches which keep blowing out.

In the same way, you were happy in spring, With the half colors of quarter-things, The slightly brighter sky, the melting clouds, The single bird, the obscure moon- The obscure moon lighting an obscure world Of thing that would never be quite expressed, Where you yourself were never quite yourself And did not want nor have to be.

I don't want to lose too much of the mystery by hammering every detail to death.

The fact is, the Time Traveller was one of those men who are too clever to be believed: you never felt that you saw all round him; you always suspected some subtle reserve, some ingenuity in ambush, behind his lucid frankness.