Quotes by Richard Stallman

• 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 desire to be rewarded for one's creativity does not justify depriving the world in general of all or part of that creativity.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Value your freedom or you will lose it, teaches history. 'Don't bother us with politics', respond those who don't want to learn.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Anything that prevents you from being friendly, a good neighbour, is a terror tactic.
• All governments should be pressured to correct their abuses of 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.
• 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.