I mentioned the non-competitive spirit explicitly, because these days, excellence is a fashionable concept. But excellence is a competitive notion, and that is not what we are heading for: we are heading for perfection.
More Quotes by Edsger Dijkstra
Perfecting oneself is as much unlearning as it is learning.
Elegance is not a dispensable luxury but a factor that decides between success and failure.
Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability.
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
Programming is one of the most difficult branches of applied mathematics; the poorer mathematicians had better remain pure mathematicians.
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.