Richard Stallman Quotes
"The desire to be rewarded for one's creativity does not justify depriving the world in general of all or part of that creativity."
- Richard Stallman
(Related: Creativity, Desire, World)
"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."
- Richard Stallman
(Related: People, Church, Sin)
"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."
- Richard Stallman
(Related: Work, Income, Nothing, Wrong)
"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."
- Richard Stallman
(Related: Reason)
"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."
- Richard Stallman
(Related: Idea, Practice)
"Value your freedom or you will lose it, teaches history. 'Don't bother us with politics', respond those who don't want to learn."
- Richard Stallman
(Related: History, Politics, Freedom, Value, Want, Will)
"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."
- Richard Stallman
"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."
- Richard Stallman
(Related: Life, Money, People, Building, Career, End, World, Writing, Years)
"Fighting patents one by one will never eliminate the danger of software patents, any more than swatting mosquitoes will eliminate malaria."
- Richard Stallman
(Related: Danger, Fighting, Mosquitoes, Software, Will)
"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."
- Richard Stallman
(Related: People, Ideas, Control)
"Anything that prevents you from being friendly, a good neighbour, is a terror tactic."
- Richard Stallman
(Related: Being, Terror)
"All governments should be pressured to correct their abuses of human rights."
- Richard Stallman
(Related: Rights, Human rights)
"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."
- Richard Stallman
(Related: Capitalism, Competition, Job, Wrong)
"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."
- Richard Stallman
(Related: Goal, Idealism, Want, World)