I could have made money this way, and perhaps amused myself writing code. But I knew that at the end of my career, I would look back on years of building walls to divide people, and feel I had spent my life making the world a worse place.

All governments should be pressured to correct their abuses of human rights.

There is nothing wrong with wanting pay for work, or seeking to maximize one's income, as long as one does not use means that are destructive.

Control over the use of one's ideas really constitutes control over other people's lives; and it is usually used to make their lives more difficult.

People sometimes ask me if it is a sin in the Church of Emacs to use vi. Using a free version of vi is not a sin; it is a penance. So happy hacking.

The paradigm of competition is a race: by rewarding the winner, we encourage everyone to run faster. When capitalism really works this way, it does a good job; but its defenders are wrong in assuming it always works this way.

Whether gods exist or not, there is no way to get absolute certainty about ethics. Without absolute certainty, what do we do? We do the best we can.

Value your freedom or you will lose it, teaches history. 'Don't bother us with politics', respond those who don't want to learn.

The idea of copyright did not exist in ancient times, when authors frequently copied other authors at length in works of non-fiction. This practice was useful, and is the only way many authors' works have survived even in part.

If you want to accomplish something in the world, idealism is not enough - you need to choose a method that works to achieve the goal.

I could have made money this way, and perhaps amused myself writing code. But I knew that at the end of my career, I would look back on years of building walls to divide people, and feel I had spent my life making the world a worse place.

Fighting patents one by one will never eliminate the danger of software patents, any more than swatting mosquitoes will eliminate malaria.

The desire to be rewarded for one's creativity does not justify depriving the world in general of all or part of that creativity.

The reason that a good citizen does not use such destructive means to become wealthier is that, if everyone did so, we would all become poorer from the mutual destructiveness.

If programmers deserve to be rewarded for creating innovative programs, by the same token they deserve to be punished if they restrict the use of these programs.

Anything that prevents you from being friendly, a good neighbour, is a terror tactic.

A smartphone is a computer - it's not built using a computer - the job it does is the job of being a computer. So, everything we say about computers, that the software you run should be free - you should insist on that - applies to smart phones just the same. And likewise to those tablets.

Android is very different from the GNU/Linux operating system because it contains very little of GNU. Indeed, just about the only component in common between Android and GNU/Linux is Linux, the kernel.

Facebook is not your friend, it is a surveillance engine.

Free software is software that respects your freedom and the social solidarity of your community. So it's free as in freedom.

I suppose many people will continue moving towards careless computing, because there's a sucker born every minute.

If ebooks mean that readers' freedom must either increase or decrease, we must demand the increase.

If you use a proprietary program or somebody else's web server, you're defenceless. You're putty in the hands of whoever developed that software.

One reason you should not use web applications to do your computing is that you lose control.

Sharing is good, and with digital technology, sharing is easy.

Software patents are dangerous to software developers because they impose monopolies on software ideas.

The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women's fashion.

The idea of copyright did not exist in ancient times when authors frequently copied other authors at length in works of non fiction. This practice was useful and is the only way many authors works have survived even in part.

Globalizing a bad thing makes it worse. But globalizing a good thing is usually good.

A hacker is someone who enjoys playful cleverness not necessarily with computers. The programmers in the old MIT free software community of the 60s and 70s referred to themselves as hackers. Around 1980 journalists who discovered the hacker community mistakenly took the term to mean security breaker.

Programming is not a science. Programming is a craft.

Sharing knowledge is the most fundamental act of friendship. Because it is a way you can give something without loosing something.

We must support initiatives that provide clear, concrete measures and milestones that our troops need for defeating the insurgency, building up Iraqi security forces, and handing over Iraq to the Iraqi people.

In other words, I have no truck for anyone who goes out and does an eclectic building.

We believe that peace is not just signed papers, but rather a contract between generations for the building of a more promising and less threatening future.

Belief in oneself is one of the most important bricks in building any successful venture.

Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down.

When I say artist I mean the man who is building things - creating molding the earth - whether it be the plains of the west - or the iron ore of Penn. It's all a big game of construction - some with a brush - some with a shovel - some choose a pen.

Nature is my manifestation of God. I go to nature every day for inspiration in the day's work. I follow in building the principles which nature has used in its domain.

So I rang up a local building firm, I said 'I want a skip outside my house.' He said 'I'm not stopping you.'

We have a group of friends of the museum who try to raise, if they can, periodically something to help us. Of course, the main thing about a building like this is its upkeep. It needs central heating and it needs central air conditioning.

Rather, it is through conciliation and compromise that we are building a fair Iraq, a just state for all its peoples.

For the next century, the Republicans have agreed that we will promote the dignity and future of every individual by building a free society under a limited, accountable government that protects liberty, security and prosperity for a brighter American dream.

I smuggled the camera, it was no problem to smuggle the camera there. And I took 60 photos, two films, during the time when there was no one in the control room, in the building.

Well, by the end of the millennium, five, six months from now, we hope to somehow manage to move into a new location where we have the whole building, so we can devote space to all our activities.

The anger that appears to be building up between the sexes becomes more virulent with every day that passes. And far from women taking the blame... the fact is that men are invariably portrayed as the bad guys. Being a good man is like being a good Nazi.

Building one space station for everyone was and is insane: we should have built a dozen.

There are some who are scared by unity and by building a country on the basis of ideas.

I don't think so, in that Virgin is already a global brand. Brands like Amazon have had to spend hundreds of millions of pounds you know, building their brands, whereas Virgin is already well-known around the world.