Richard Stallman quotes

Richard Stallman is an American software freedom activist and programmer, best known for founding the Free Software Movement. His work led to the creation of the GNU Project and the GNU General Public License, which transformed the software industry. He remains an outspoken advocate for digital rights and the ethical use of technology. Here are 157 of his quotes:

Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone. (Richard Stallman)
You can use any editor you want, but remember that vi vi vi is the text editor of the beast. View quote
Richard Stallman
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. View quote
Richard Stallman
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. View quote
Richard Stallman
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. View quote
Richard Stallman
Fighting patents one by one will never eliminate the danger of software patents, any more than swatting mosquitoes will eliminate malaria. View quote
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. View quote
Richard Stallman
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. View quote
Richard Stallman
People get the government their behavior deserves. People deserve better than that. View quote
Richard Stallman
I figure that since proprietary software developers use copyright to stop us from sharing, we cooperators can use copyright to give other cooperators an advantage of their own: they can use our code. View quote
Richard Stallman
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)
One reason you should not use web applications to do your computing is that you lose control. View quote
Richard Stallman
The Adobe flash plug-in is non-free software, and people should not install it, or suggest installing it, or even tell people it exists. View quote
Richard Stallman
While corporations dominate society and write the laws, each advance in technology is an opening for them to further restrict its users. View quote
Richard Stallman
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. View quote
Richard Stallman
No person, no idea, and no religion deserves to be illegal to insult, not even the Church of Emacs - and certainly not Islam. View quote
Richard Stallman
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. View quote
Richard Stallman
Once GNU is written, everyone will be able to obtain good system software free, just like air. View quote
Richard Stallman
Prior art is as effective as US soldiers in Iraq: They control the ground they stand on, and nothing more. I used to say Vietnam, but, well, you know... View quote
Richard Stallman
Odious ideas are not entitled to hide from criticism behind the human shield of their believers' feelings. View quote
Richard Stallman
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)
Laws that oppress people have no moral authority. View quote
Richard Stallman
My favorite programming languages are Lisp and C. However, since around 1992 I have worked mainly on free software activism, which means I am too busy to do much programming. Around 2008 I stopped doing programming projects. View quote
Richard Stallman
It is hard to write a simple definition of something as varied as hacking, but I think what these activities have in common is playfulness, cleverness, and exploration. Thus, hacking means exploring the limits of what is possible, in a spirit of playful cleverness. Activities that display playful cleverness have "hack value." View quote
Richard Stallman
People said I should accept the world. Bullshit! I don't accept the world. View quote
Richard Stallman