"Simplifications have had a much greater long-range scientific impact than individual feats of ingenuity. The opportunity for simplification is very encouraging, because in all examples that come to mind the simple and elegant systems tend to be easier and faster to design and get right, more efficient in execution, and much more reliable than the more contrived contraptions that have to be debugged into some degree of acceptability....Simplicity and elegance are unpopular because they require hard work and discipline to achieve and education to be appreciated. -- Edsger W. Dijkstra
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. -- Albert Einstein
Simplicity is a prerequisite for reliability. -- Edsger W.Dijkstra
Fools ignore complexity; pragmatists suffer it; experts avoid it; geniuses remove it. -- Alan Perlis
At first I hoped that such a technically unsound project would collapse but I soon realized it was doomed to success. Almost anything in software can be implemented, sold, and even used given enough determination. There is nothing a mere scientist can say that will stand against the flood of a hundred million dollars. But there is one quality that cannot be purchased in this way and that is reliability. The price of reliability is the pursuit of the utmost simplicity. It is a price which the very rich find most hard to pay. -- C.A.R. Hoare, ""The Emperor's Old Clothes"", Turing Award Lecture (1980)"