Richard Stallman Quotes

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

If the users don't control the program, the program controls the users. With proprietary software, there is always some entity, the "owner" of the program, that controls the program and through it, exercises power over its users. A nonfree program is a yoke, an instrument of unjust power.

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'.

Programming is not a science. Programming is a craft.

I did write some code in Java once, but that was the island in Indonesia.

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.

People said I should accept the world. Bullshit! I don't accept the world.

Steve Jobs, the pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed to sever fools from their freedom, has died.

You can use any editor you want, but remember that vi vi vi is the text editor of the beast.

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

I've read that male dolphins try to have sex with humans, and female apes solicit sex from humans. What is wrong with giving them what they want, if that's what turns you on, or even just to gratify them?

Playfully doing something difficult, whether useful or not, that is hacking.

There is no system but GNU and Linux is one of it's kernels

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.

Proprietary software tends to have malicious features. The point is with a proprietary program, when the users dont have the source code, we can never tell. So you must consider every proprietary program as potential malware.

Idiots can be defeated but they never admit it.

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

Open source is a development methodology; free software is a social movement.

Snow is so beautiful, it doesn't have to be useful.

I don’t have a problem with someone using their talents to become successful, I just don’t think the highest calling is success. Things like freedom and the expansion of knowledge are beyond success, beyond the personal. Personal success is not wrong, but it is limited in importance, and once you have enough of it it is a shame to keep striving for that, instead of for truth, beauty, or justice.

Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone.

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.

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