Edsger Dijkstra Quotes

Volume depends precisely on the writer's having been able to sit in a room every day, year after year, alone.

Prayer time must be kept up as duly as meal-time.

Just write, get better, keep writing, keep getting better. It's the only thing you can control.

The first two, three, four weeks are wasted. I just show up in front of the computer. Show up, show up, show up, and after a while the muse shows up, too. If she doesn't show up invited, eventually she just shows up.

You have to have a patience for exercise. You have to have a patience for college. You have to have a patience for relationships. Once the momentum gets going it takes on a life all of its own.

Don't ever have a rule that you won't enforce with your best player.

When or if answers are found, you can be assured those answers will lead to more questions. Is the troubling or wonderful? It depends on your view of your place in nature, your place among the stars; I suppose.

Whether it's a painter finding his way each morning to the easel, or a medical researcher returning daily to the laboratory, the routine is as much a part of the creative process as the lightning bolt of inspiration, maybe more.

There is an advantage in having a routine and working with the same people when you can and in writing as a regular thing and filming as a regular thing. That routine pays off for you. You get a lot of productivity that way, rather than sitting around waiting for inspiration and waiting for the perfect thing to happen. I would be much less productive that way.

The most difficult part, when you decide to make running a part of your life style, is the basic initial commitment. Everybody says, 'I don't have the time.' It's up to you to say, 'I do have the time.' For me, beginning to run when I was a student was an ideal situation. However, I've also trained as much as 130 miles per week during periods when I worked a full-time job. It ultimately becomes second nature. It becomes a habit, a routine part of your daily life

I have no friends and I never leave my house. You just have to make a choice to just refuse to be involved with things that could get you in trouble. It's easy when you feel upset or depressed about something to want to go to a club and want to drink, but instead I just force myself to sit and feel it and deal with it, and try to grow from it, because I don't want to go down that path. I'm one of the most isolated people in existence right now, but it's worth it because if I wasn't making that decision I would be throwing away my career.

I train the same way as I've always trained, even before I was champion. That's the difference, I train like a challenger.

Adventure, I well know, is in the heart, not in the view.

Discipline provides a constancy which is independent of what kind of day you had yesterday and what kind of day you anticipate today.

If I must be a slave to habit let me be a slave to good habits.

The pleasure of doing a thing in the same way at the same time every day, and savoring it, should be noted.

I always try to practice what I preach. I meditate for fifteen minutes every day and do yoga several times a week.

It is not until science has become a discipline to which the research ability of any mind from any class in society can be attracted that it can become rigorously scientific.

Unless we fix certain hours in the day for prayer, it easily slips from our memory.

Make everyday as productive as the day before you go on vacation.

Who can really be faithful in great things if he has not learned to be faithful in the things of daily life?

A leader can't make excuses. There has to be quality in everything you do. Off the court, on the court, in the classroom.

From the sentimental point of view, it is the last great Polar journey that can be made.

The writing ethic was influenced - when you have to write every day, there's no such thing as writer's block.

If you have to do durational work, you have to train! No bullshit. You can't do it for three months. You can do it for five hours, 10 hours, and then you have three months rest. If this is your job, you have to be flexible.