Richard M Stallman Quotes

#1. Android is a major step towards an ethical, user-controlled, free-software portable phone, but there is a long way to go.

Richard Stallman

#2. You know, if you were *really* going to starve, you'd be justified in writing proprietary software.

Richard Stallman

#3. Without absolute certainty, what do we do? We do the best we can. Injustice is happening now; suffering is happening now. We have choices to make now. To insist on absolute certainty before starting to apply ethics to life decisions is a way of choosing to be amoral.

Richard Stallman

#4. I have not seen anyone assume that all the citizens of New York are guilty of murder, violence, robbery, perjury, or writing proprietary software.

Richard Stallman

#5. Also, because schools must teach the spirit of goodwill, the habit of helping others around you, every class should have this rule: students, if you bring software to class you may not keep it for yourself.

Richard Stallman

#6. Paying isn't wrong, and being paid isn't wrong. Trampling other people's freedom and community is wrong, so the free software movement aims to put an end to it, at least in the area of software.

Richard Stallman

#7. One noted software libertarian, Richard Stallman, even refused to protect his account with a password.

Kevin D. Mitnick

#8. I never imagined that the Free Software Movement would spawn a watered-down alternative, the Open Source Movement, which would become so well-known that people would ask me questions about 'open source' thinking that I work under that banner.

Richard Stallman

#9. It doesn't take special talents to reproduce
even plants can do it. On the other hand, contributing to a program like Emacs takes real skill. That is really something to be proud of. It helps more people, too.

Richard Stallman

#10. 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

#11. The most powerful programming language is Lisp. If you don't know Lisp (or its variant, Scheme), you don't appreciate what a powerful language is. Once you learn Lisp you will see what is missing in most other languages.

Richard Stallman

#12. Odious ideas are not entitled to hide from criticism behind the human shield of their believers feelings.

Richard Stallman

#13. We need to teach people to refuse to install non-free plug-ins; we need to teach people to care more about their long-term interest of freedom than their immediate desire to view a particular site.

Richard Stallman

#14. With software there are only two possibilites: either the users control the programme or the programme controls the users. If the programme controls the users, and the developer controls the programme, then the programme is an instrument of unjust power.

Richard Stallman

#15. I'm the last survivor of a dead culture. And I don't really belong in the world anymore. And in some ways I feel I ought to be dead.

Richard Stallman

#16. I consider the law prohibiting the sharing of copies with your friend the moral equivalent of Jim Crow. It does not deserve respect.

Richard M. Stallman

#17. I'm trying to change the way people approach knowledge and information in general. I think that to try to own knowledge, to try to control whether people are allowed to use it, or to try to stop other people from sharing it, is sabotage.

Richard Stallman

#18. When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price.

Richard M. Stallman

#19. I'm always happy when I'm protesting.

Richard Stallman

#20. Facebook mistreats its users. Facebook is not your friend; it is a surveillance engine. For instance, if you browse the Web and you see a 'like' button in some page or some other site that has been displayed from Facebook. Therefore, Facebook knows that your machine visited that page.

Richard Stallman

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

Richard Stallman

#22. Would a dating service on the net be 'frowned upon' ... ? I hope not. But even if it is, don't let that stop you from notifying me via net mail if you start one.

Richard Stallman

#23. No person, no idea, and no religion deserves to be illegal to insult, not even the Church of Emacs.

Richard Stallman

#24. 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

#25. 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.

Richard Stallman

#26. In trying to understand the Linux phenomenon, then, we have to look not at a single innovator but to a sort of bizarre Trinity : Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman, and Bill Gates. Take away any of these three and Linux would not exist.

Neal Stephenson

#27. Idiots can be defeated but they never admit it.

Richard Stallman

#28. CD stores have the disadvantage of an expensive inventory, but digital bookshops would need no such thing: they could write copies at the time of sale on to memory sticks, and sell you one if you forgot your own.

Richard Stallman

#29. 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.

Richard Stallman

#30. The idea that laws decide what is right or wrong is mistaken in general. Laws are, at their best, an attempt to achieve justice; to say that laws define justice or ethical conduct is turning things upside down.

Richard Stallman

#31. 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'.

Richard Stallman

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

Richard Stallman

#33. 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

#34. Writing non-free software is not an ethically legitimate activity, so if people who do this run into trouble, that's good! All businesses based on non-free software ought to fail, and the sooner the better.

Richard Stallman

#35. Facebook collects a lot of data from people and admits it. And it also collects data which isn't admitted. And Google does too. As for Microsoft, I don't know. But I do know that Windows has features that send data about the user.

Richard Stallman

#36. It's clear that other problems such as [ ... ] the domination of business over government, science, thought, and society, are much bigger than non-free software.

Richard Stallman

#37. If in my lifetime the problem of non-free software is solved, I could perhaps relax and write software again. But I might instead try to help deal with the world's larger problems. Standing up to an evil system is exhilarating, and now I have a taste for it.

Richard Stallman

#38. Giving the Linus Torvalds Award to the Free Software Foundation is a bit like giving the Han Solo Award to the Rebel Alliance.

Richard Stallman

#39. Many users of the GNU/Linux system will not have heard the ideas of free software. They will not be aware that we have ideas, that a system exists because of ethical ideals, which were omitted from ideas associated with the term 'open source.'

Richard Stallman

#40. Laws that oppress people have no moral authority

Richard Stallman