All Quotes

“Mrs. Ballinger is one of the ladies who pursue Culture in bands, as though it were dangerous to meet it alone. "Xingu" (1911), from Xingu and Other Stories”

“How much longer are we going to think it necessary to be "American" before (or in contradistinction to) being cultivated, being enlightened, being humane, & having the same intellectual discipline as other civilized countries? Letter to Barrett Wendell”

“Nota: Comentario de Manet a Antonin Proust en 1862.”

“For a number of years I have been familiar with the observation that the quality of programmers is a decreasing function of the density of go to statements in the programs they produce. More recently I discovered why the use of the go to statement has such disastrous effects, and I became convinced that the go to statement should be abolished from all \"higher level\" programming languages.”

“Our intellectual powers are rather geared to master static relations and ... our powers to visualize processes evolving in time are relatively poorly developed. For that reason we should do (as wise programmers aware of our limitations) our utmost to shorten the conceptual gap between the static program and the dynamic process, to make the correspondence between the program (spread out in text space) and the process (spread out in time) as trivial as possible. Dijkstra (1968) "A Case against the GO TO Statement" cited in: Bill Curtis (1981) Tutorial, human factors in software development. p. 109.”

“Testing shows the presence, not the absence of bugs Dijkstra (1969) J.N. Buxton and B. Randell, eds, Software Engineering Techniques, April 1970. Report on a conference sponsored by the NATO Science Committee, Rome, Italy, 27–31 October 1969. p. 16. Possibly the earliest documented use of the famous quote.”

“A convincing demonstration of correctness being impossible as long as the mechanism is regarded as a black box, our only hope lies in not regarding the mechanism as a black box. Dijkstra (1970) "Notes On Structured Programming" (EWD249), Section 3 ("On The Reliability of Mechanisms"), p. 5.”

“When we take the position that it is not only the programmer's responsibility to produce a correct program but also to demonstrate its correctness in a convincing manner, then the above remarks have a profound influence on the programmer's activity: the object he has to produce must be usefully structured. Dijkstra (1970) "Notes On Structured Programming" (EWD249), Section 3 ("On The Reliability of Mechanisms"), p. 6.”

“The art of programming is the art of organizing complexity, of mastering multitude and avoiding its bastard chaos as effectively as possible. Dijkstra (1970) "Notes On Structured Programming" (EWD249), Section 3 ("On The Reliability of Mechanisms"), p. 7.”

“Program testing can be used to show the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence! Dijkstra (1970) "Notes On Structured Programming" (EWD249), Section 3 ("On The Reliability of Mechanisms"), corollary at the end.”

“The competent programmer is fully aware of the strictly limited size of his own skull; therefore he approaches the programming task in full humility, and among other things he avoids clever tricks like the plague. Dijkstra (1972) The Humble Programmer (EWD340).”

“Another two years later, in 1957, I married and Dutch marriage rites require you to state your profession and I stated that I was a programmer. But the municipal authorities of the town of Amsterdam did not accept it on the grounds that there was no such profession. And, believe it or not, but under the heading "profession" my marriage act shows the ridiculous entry "theoretical physicist"! Dijkstra (1972) The Humble Programmer (EWD340).”

“Automatic computers have now been with us for a quarter of a century. They have had a great impact on our society in their capacity of tools, but in that capacity their influence will be but a ripple on the surface of our culture, compared with the much more profound influence they will have in their capacity of intellectual challenge without precedent in the cultural history of mankind. Dijkstra (1972) The Humble Programmer (EWD340).”

“I am at work on a girl . It is quite simple a girl getting up on the edge of her bed and pulling on her stockings. The bed is whitish, and in addition there are white sheets, a white nightdress, a bedside table with a white cover, white curtains and a blue wall. [as model for his painting 'Morning', 1884] Quote in Munch's letter to Olav Paulsen , September 1884; as cited in Edvard Much”

“Life here [in Paris, 1885] is quite different. You hardly ever see a dog on a lead; you come across little wagons being pulled by dogs that are often so small that you can't imagine how on earth they manage to shift such enormous weights. You see shepherdesses in the middle of the street herding goats and sometimes playing on their flutes. I think I'll go to the Louvre and the Salon today. Quote in Munch's letter (1885); as cited in Edvard Munchs Brev, Familien , Oslo: Tanum, 1949, p. 57”

“No longer shall I paint interiors with men reading and women knitting. I will paint living people who breathe and feel and suffer and love. Quote from Munch's text (1889) 'Impressions from a ballroom, New Year's Eve in St. Cloud'”

“I thought I should make something”

“Quotes from his text: 'Saint Cloud Manifesto', Munch (1889): as quoted in Edvard Much”

“When seen as a whole, art derives from a person's desire to communicate himself to another. I do not believe in an art which is not forced into existence by a human being’s desire to open his heart. All art, literature, and music must be born in your heart’s blood. Art is your heart’s blood. Manuscript (1891); as quoted in Edvard Munch and the Physiology of Symbolism (2002) by Shelley Wood Cordulack”

“I was walking along a path with two friends”

“Realism's 'truth' as embodied in painting and literature now solely consists of things capable of being seen by the eye or heard by the ear. Realism is concerned only with the external shell of nature. People content with the discoveries they have made ignore the fact that there are other things to be discovered, even broader avenues to be explored. They have found bacteria, but not what they consist of. [quote of 1892) OKK 1760 (Nice, January 1892); as quoted in Edvard Much”

“Nothing ceases to exist”

“By painting colours and lines and forms seen in a quickened mood I was seeking to make this mood vibrate as a phonograph does. In: Diary Saint Cloud, 1898; Munch, as quoted in Edvard Much”

“The Exploration of Space”

“Science is the one human activity that is truly progressive. The Realm of the Nebulae”

“Eventually, we reach the utmost limits of our telescopes. There, we measure shadows and search among ghostly errors of measurement for landmarks that are scarcely more substantial. The Realm of the Nebulae”

“The history of astronomy is a history of receding horizons. The Realm of the Nebulae”

“...there must be no favored location in the universe, no center, no boundary; all must see the universe alike. And, in order to ensure this situation, the cosmologist postulates spatial isotropy and spatial homogeneity. The Observational Approach to Cosmology , 1937, p. 63”

“The whole thing is so much bigger than I am, and I can't understand it, so I just trust myself to it; and forget about it. Hubble's reply when asked about his beliefs from a friend, as quoted in Edwin Hubble: Mariner of the Nebulae (1996) by Gale E. Christianson, p. 183.”

“We do not know why we are born into the world, but we can try to find out what sort of a world it is”