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.

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.

I hate thinking about it, teaching about it, and writing about it. But the plain truth is that hell is real and real people go there for eternity.

There is some sign that North Korea is changing recently. There is ongoing successful negotiation to have a military talk to Pyongyang, which has been stopped for seven years.

I do not ask, O Lord, that life may be a pleasant road.

Success is a ladder that cannot be climbed with your hands in your pocket “ The road to success is always under construction.

Light-field photography is a transformational technology that needs a transformational product to introduce it. For the first time, we have a light-field camera that's going to be for everyone - not something in a huge room in a research facility.

The aim of every authentic artist is not to conform to the history of art, but to release himself from it in order to replace it with his own history.

I was pretty successful before Sept. 11 and fully expected that when I left being mayor I would be very successful.

Assisted suicide will discriminate against the old the ill and the disabled.

I really like playing good guys, of course. Although, people make mistakes in their lives, and you could say that the mistakes make us who we are, by how we respond to them. I just don't want to play boring good guys, but I don't have that problem, anyway.

The capacity for inner dialogue is a touchstone for outer objectivity.

In my adult life, I had spent a lot of time angry at God, mostly over the sudden deaths in my family - my brother at 30, my daughter at 5.

I am certainly not an intellectual relativist, nor a moral relativist.

When I look in the mirror, I see someone who's happy with how he looks, because I was never one of the handsome Hollywood people. And I've had success as I've gotten older, because I'm able to play characters. I no longer get the girl, but I get the part.

Grammar and logic free language from being at the mercy of the tone of voice.

Remember that the word of God is not sent to particular persons, as if by name; and do not think you have no part in it, because you are not named there.

The American free market system is the greatest engine for prosperity and opportunity that the world has ever seen. Freedom works.

Rand Paul does not like being compared to his father Ron any more than sons named Bush like to dance in their father's shadow, but the crucial difference is that while the Bushes all hail from the relative mainstream of the GOP, the Pauls have an ideological tributary virtually to themselves.