Richard Stallman Quotes (25 Quotes)

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.

The free world welcomes Sun's decision to use the Free Software Foundation's GPL.

One basis for society is that of helping your neighbor -- but in the software world this is piracy. To prevent this, the U. S. is putting in place practices which are like those in the former Soviet Union -- computerized guards, propaganda in favor of licensing, rewards for informing on co-workers, and penalties which make distributing software as serious a crime as armed robbery.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

If you focus your mind on the freedom and community that you can build by staying firm, you will find the strength to do it.

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.

Accusations against innocent people happen with terrible regularity, and the danger of false convictions is immense.

UCITA applies to any sort of computer-readable information. Even if you use only free software, you are likely to read articles on your computer, and access databases. UCITA will allow the publishers to impose the most outrageous restrictions on you. They could change the license retroactively at any time, and force you to delete the material if you don't accept the change. They could even prohibit you from describing what you see as flaws in the material.

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.

Free software' is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of 'free' as in 'free speech,' not as in 'free beer'.

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.

The world has sprung very nasty threats on us and our software.

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

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

British book publishers plan to put a microchip into every book to record who owns it - an unprecedented surveillance measure.

I partly agree with the underlying message that people should take charge and solve problems, rather than just cast blame on others.

I found it tremendously humiliating to be there because most of the kids there were brain dead or psychotic.

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.

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.

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