Edsger Dijkstra Quotes

It is sometimes said that the major discoveries have already been made and that there is nothing important left to find. This attitude is altogether too pessimistic. There are plenty of ideas and plenty of things left to discover. The trick is to find the right path from one to the other.

Nobody is bored when he is trying to make something that is beautiful, or to discover something that is true.

I find that each job that I do, the thing that gets me there is when I'm not smarter than it, when I don't know instantly how that thing is made. Because if I do, then it's boring. Or it would be simple.

If people like Edison had waited to make every - or Ben Franklin or some of those people had waited to solve every problem on Earth before they did their research or before they were curious about doing something new, we'd never have made a lot of the progress we have.

The greatest discoveries all start with the question "Why?"

For the world to be interesting, you have to be manipulating it all the time.

I'm sort of an experimenter; I thought it'd be interesting to play around and see what's there.

Science means constantly walking a tightrope between blind faith and curiosity; between expertise and creativity; between bias and openness; between experience and epiphany; between ambition and passion; and between arrogance and conviction - in short, between an old today and a new tomorrow.

I've always been a great believer that you have to keep producing new things in order to keep life interesting - not only for ourselves, but for the audience as well. That's really always been our principle and way of working.

I think I have sort of gravitated toward issues that I don't know the answers to, because that's what's more interesting for me to write.

I opened up every can of worms I could. I got to the place where I would peel back one layer, and then another layer, and the stuff that would come up underneath was so inspiring, it made me want to write about it.

I love finding and doing new things and trying stuff out; that's my favorite thing to do.

Every time you do something, make something, it's final in a way, but it's not. It immediately raises a great set of questions. And if you become a question addict, which I am, you immediately have something you need to pursue.

I think I've always been slightly addicted to not repeating myself. When you're doing something the first time around, it's often the best time. I think 'Blank Project' is about carrying on. Its that thing where you're making something because you have to, but you don't know how or why.

Necessity may be the mother of invention, but play is certainly the father.

If you keep proving stuff that others have done, getting confidence, increasing the complexities of your solutions - for the fun of it - then one day you'll turn around and discover that nobody actually did that one!

The most creative people are motivated by the grandest of problems that are presented before them.

Without imagination we can go nowhere. And imagination is not restricted to the arts. Every scientist I have met who has been a success has had to imagine.

I didn't do my work for money or prizes - only for the excitement of discovery.

I'm normally drawn to something I haven't done and seen before.

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.

The thing I love about science is finding out something new and different.

My theory in anything you do is to keep exploring, keep digging deeper to find new stuff.

I'm more interested in what I discover than what I invent.

Every great inspiration is but an experiment - though every experiment we know, is not a great inspiration.