Cory Doctorow quotes

Cory Doctorow is a Canadian-British author, journalist, and activist, renowned for his work in science fiction and digital rights. His novels and essays explore topics like technology, privacy, and the future of the internet. He is widely recognized as a leading voice for open access and digital freedom. Here are 76 of his quotes:

All secrets are deep. All secrets become dark. That's in the nature of secrets.

Cory Doctorow

This is why I loved technology: if you used it right, it could give you power and privacy.

Cory Doctorow

Engineers are all basically high-functioning autistics who have no idea how normal people do stuff.

Cory Doctorow

Never underestimate the determination of a kid who is time rich and cash poor.

Cory Doctorow

No one should do a job he can do in his sleep.

Cory Doctorow

It's not necessarily about what career you pick. It's about how you do what you do.

Cory Doctorow

It is a mistake to let aesthetics drive your rational decision making.

Cory Doctorow

Open platforms and experimental amateurs ... eventually beat out the spendy, slick pros. ... Relying on incumbents to produce your revolutions is not a good strategy. They're apt to take all the stuff that makes their products great and try to use technology to charge you extra for it, or prohibit it altogether.

Cory Doctorow

Any time someone puts a lock on something you own against your wishes, and doesn't give you the key, they're not doing it for your benefit.

Cory Doctorow

Universal access to human knowledge is in our grasp, for the first time in the history of the world. This is not a bad thing.

Cory Doctorow

Conversation is king. Content is just something to talk about.

Cory Doctorow

The future's a weirder place than we thought it would be when we were little kids.

Cory Doctorow

I'm not a lawyer- I'm a kind of mouthpiece/activist type, though occasionally they shave me and stuff me into my Bar Mitzvah suit and send me to a standards body or the UN to stir up trouble. I spend about three weeks a month on the road doing completely weird stuff like going to Microsoft to talk about DRM.

Cory Doctorow

I can't go underground for a year, ten years, my whole life, waiting for freedom to be handed to me. Freedom is something you have to take for yourself.

Cory Doctorow

I'm of the opinion that science fiction writers suck at predicting the future. We mostly go around describing the present in futuristic clothes - (such as) Mary Shelley, Bill Gibson, and many others.

Cory Doctorow

I swore I'd be done, and that would be the end of it. And now I am. There isn't a single place left on-world that isn't part of the Bitchun Society. There isn't a single thing left that I want any part of.

Cory Doctorow

The real damage from terrorist attacks doesn't come from the explosion. The real damage is done after the explosion, by the victims, who repeatedly and determinedly attack themselves, giving over reason in favor of terror. Every London cop who stops someone from taking a picture of a public building, every TSA agent who takes away your kid's toothpaste, every NSA spook who wiretaps your email, does the terrorist's job for him. Terrorism is about magnifying one mediagenic act of violence into one hundred billion acts of terrorized authoritarian idiocy.

Cory Doctorow

Christ, you're dragging me out for that? I can tell you what they'll say. They'll drag out the Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse: kiddie porn, terrorists, pirates, and the mafia. They'll tell us that any tool for communicating that they can't tap, log, and switch off is irresponsible. They'll tell us we're stealing from ISPs. It's what they say every time someone tries this: Philly, New York, London. All around the world same song.

Cory Doctorow

Skipping school isn't a crime. It's an infraction. They're totally different.

Cory Doctorow

Put simply, I want to treat my readers as partners and not crooks. There is no future in calling your most active promoters crooks.

Cory Doctorow

Once you get to naming your laptop, you know that you're really having a deep relationship with it.

Cory Doctorow

Funny, for all surveillance, Osama bin Laden is still free—and we're not. Guess who's winning the "war on terror?

Cory Doctorow