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Experience shows that the success of a programming course critically depends on the choice of these examples.

— Niklaus Wirth Program Development by Stepwise Refinement (1971)

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More quotes by Niklaus Wirth

In our profession, precision and perfection are not a dispensable luxury, but a simple necessity.

Niklaus Wirth (1997)

Reliable and transparent programs are usually not in the interest of the designer.

Niklaus Wirth (1999)

The possible solutions to a given problem emerge as the leaves of a tree, each node representing a point of deliberation and decision.

Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster.

In the practical world of computing, it is rather uncommon that a program, once it performs correctly and satisfactorily, remains unchanged forever.

Program Development by Stepwise Refinement (1971)

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We spend our lives fighting to get people very slightly more stupid than ourselves to accept truths that the great men have always known.

Doris Lessing The Golden Notebook (1962)

To rank the effort above the prize may be called love.

Confucius

Greatness by nature includes a power, but not a will to power.

Martin Buber Between Man and Man (1965)

The weak shows his strength and hides his weaknesses; the magnificent exhibits his weaknesses like ornaments.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Niklaus Wirth (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.