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"There should be no such thing as boring mathematics."
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"Well, some mathematics problems look simple, and you try them for a year or so, and then you try them for a hundred years, and it turns out that they're extremely hard to solve."
"My mathematics is simple: one plus one = one."
"I have in later years taken to Euclid, Whitehead, Bertrand Russell, in an elemental way."
"I tell them that if they will occupy themselves with the study of mathematics they will find in it the best remedy against the lusts of the flesh."
"Few rounds.... I am damn good mathematician!2 999 999 999 999 999 999 + 11 999 999 999 999 999 999 = 14 999 999 999 999 999 998."
""Obvious" is the most dangerous word in mathematics."
"I went to Princeton from Amherst, where I split my interests between mathematics and philosophy."
"In mathematics we have long since drawn the rein, and given over a hopeless race."
"Mathematics doesn't care about those beyond the numbers."
"The square root of I is I."
Explore more quotes by Edsger Dijkstra
"Elegance is not a dispensable luxury but a factor that decides between success and failure."
"Don't compete with me: firstly, I have more experience, and secondly, I have chosen the weapons."
"The ability of discerning high quality unavoidably implies the ability of identifying shortcomings."
"Teaching to unsuspecting youngsters the effective use of formal methods is one of the joys of life because it is so extremely rewarding."
"The traditional mathematician recognizes and appreciates mathematical elegance when he sees it. I propose to go one step further, and to consider elegance an essential ingredient of mathematics: if it is clumsy, it is not mathematics."
"Why has elegance found so little following? That is the reality of it. Elegance has the disadvantage, if that's what it is, that hard work is needed to achieve it and a good education to appreciate it."
"Many mathematicians derive part of their self-esteem by feeling themselves the proud heirs of a long tradition of rational thinking; I am afraid they idealize their cultural ancestors."
"The students that, like the wild animal being prepared for its tricks in the circus called "life", expects only training as sketched above, will be severely disappointed: by his standards he will learn next to nothing."
"The lurking suspicion that something could be simplified is the world's richest source of rewarding challenges."
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