Science Quote by Edsger Dijkstra

Dijkstra is taking a scalpel to mathematicians’ self-mythology: the comforting idea that doing math automatically makes you a custodian of pure reason, a torchbearer in an unbroken relay race from Euclid onward. The line lands because it targets not mathematics itself but the emotional economy around it. “Self-esteem” is the giveaway: this is about identity before it’s about proofs. He’s diagnosing a subtle prestige mechanism where belonging to “rational thinking” becomes a moral credential, a way to feel elevated above messier forms of knowledge and politics.

The phrase “proud heirs” is deliberately aristocratic. It casts mathematicians as inheritors of a noble estate, suggesting that what’s being claimed is not just intellectual lineage but social status. Dijkstra’s sting comes in the anticlimax of “I am afraid,” a mild, almost genteel preface that masks a sharper accusation: they “idealize” their ancestors. In other words, they retroactively launder history into a heroic narrative, smoothing over the irrationality, metaphysics, exclusion, and contingency that always accompanied “rational” traditions. He’s puncturing the hagiography.

Context matters: Dijkstra spent his career insisting that rigor isn’t a vibe, it’s a discipline, and that sloppy thinking hides behind grand stories. As a computer scientist who fought for precision in programming, he’s also warning about imported arrogance: when mathematicians treat rationality as inheritance rather than practice, they can mistake cultural pride for intellectual cleanliness. The subtext is uncomfortable and very Dijkstra: rationality isn’t your ancestry; it’s your daily standard, and history won’t do the work for you.