Quotes by Dutch authors

"When a train goes through a tunnel and it gets dark, you don't throw away the ticket and jump off. You sit still and trust the engineer"

"The first step on the way to victory is to recognize the enemy"

"Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God"

"Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart"

"Discernment is God's call to intercession, never to faultfinding"

"Any concern too small to be turned into a prayer is too small to be made into a burden"

"The measure of a life, after all, is not its duration, but its donation"

"Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes"

"The best way to know God is to love many things"

"Worry is a cycle of inefficient thoughts whirling around a center of fear"

"Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow. It empties today of its strength"

"Memories are the key not to the past, but to the future"

"Let God's promises shine on your problems"

"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"

"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"

"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"

"Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability"

"If 10 years from now, when you are doing something quick and dirty, you suddenly visualize that I am looking over your shoulders and say to yourself: 'Dijkstra would not have liked this', well that would be enough immortality for me"

"The lurking suspicion that something could be simplified is the world's richest source of rewarding challenges"

"Perfecting oneself is as much unlearning as it is learning"

"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 question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim"

"Teaching to unsuspecting youngsters the effective use of formal methods is one of the joys of life because it is so extremely rewarding"

"Programming is one of the most difficult branches of applied mathematics; the poorer mathematicians had better remain pure mathematicians"

"Elegance is not a dispensable luxury but a factor that decides between success and failure"

"The ability of discerning high quality unavoidably implies the ability of identifying shortcomings"

"Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes"

"About the use of language: it is impossible to sharpen a pencil with a blunt axe. It is equally vain to try to do it with ten blunt axes instead"

"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"

"The competent programmer is fully aware of the limited size of his own skull. He therefore approaches his task with full humility, and avoids clever tricks like the plague"