John Perry Barlow quotes

John Perry Barlow was an American poet, essayist, and internet rights activist. As a founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, his work helped shape the conversation on digital freedom and privacy. He advocated for open internet access and the protection of civil liberties online. Here are 48 of his quotes:

Everyone seems to be playing well within the boundaries of his usual rule set. I have yet to hear anyone say something that seemed likely to mitigate the idiocy of this age. (John Perry Barlow)
We will create a civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before. View quote
John Perry Barlow
The first serious infowar is now engaged. The field of battle is WikiLeaks. You are the troops. View quote
John Perry Barlow
I don't know that I believe in the supernatural, but I do believe in miracles, and our time together was filled with the events of magical unlikelihood. View quote
John Perry Barlow
Most libertarians are worried about government but not worried about business. I think we need to be worrying about business in exactly the same way we are worrying about government. View quote
John Perry Barlow
It didn't matter what we did or where we did it as long as we were together. We knew we'd found what most people either pursue in years of futile search or dismiss as a fantasy at the outset: the missing half of ourselves. The real thing. View quote
John Perry Barlow
I support freedom of expression, no matter whose, so I oppose DDoS attacks regardless of their target... they're the poison gas of cyberspace. View quote
John Perry Barlow
So I'm just waiting until one party or the other actually gets a moral compass and a backbone. View quote
John Perry Barlow
Copyright and intellectual property are the most important issues now. If you don't have something that assures fair use, then you don't have a free society. If all ideas have to be bought, then you have an intellectually regressive system that will assure you have a highly knowledgeable elite and an ignorant mass. View quote
John Perry Barlow
If all ideas have to be bought, then you have an intellectually regressive system that will assure you have a highly knowledgeable elite and an ignorant mass. View quote
John Perry Barlow
Relying on the government to protect your privacy is like asking a peeping tom to install your window blinds. (John Perry Barlow)
The Internet treats censorship as a malfunction and routes around it. View quote
John Perry Barlow
I had always thought that the idea of love at first sight was one of those things invented by lady novelists from the South with three names. View quote
John Perry Barlow
Royalties are not how most writers or musicians make their living. Musicians by and large make a living with a relationship with an audience that is economically harnessed through performance and ticket sales. View quote
John Perry Barlow
I'm a free-marketeer. I believe in free markets, but... sometimes you have things that look like free markets but aren't because of artificial reasons. I'm not very happy with the current state of what calls itself free market economy in the world because you've got all these grotesque monopolies that are able to game the system in a way that's to their advantage by virtue of their power, and that's not a free market. View quote
John Perry Barlow
Like an angel, standing in a shaft of light Rising up to paradise, I know I'm going to shine. View quote
John Perry Barlow
My time coming, any day, don't worry about me, no Been so long I felt this way, I'm in no hurry, no. View quote
John Perry Barlow
But groundless hope, like unconditional love, is the only kind worth having. View quote
John Perry Barlow
You do not know our culture, our ethics, or the unwritten codes that already provide our society more order than could be obtained by any of your impositions. View quote
John Perry Barlow
In Cyberspace, the First Amendment is a local ordinance. View quote
John Perry Barlow
We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one, so I address you with no greater authority than that with which liberty itself always speaks. (John Perry Barlow)
Your increasingly obsolete information industries would perpetuate themselves by proposing laws, in America and elsewhere, that claim to own speech itself throughout the world. These laws would declare ideas to be another industrial product, no more noble than pig iron. View quote
John Perry Barlow
I wasn't tempted to vote for Bush, but I understand why people did... because he obviously had integrity. It was a terrible kind of integrity, but he does what he says and he means what he says. And what he says is terrible and what he does is terrible, but he's consistent. View quote
John Perry Barlow
Cyberspace consists of transactions, relationships, and thought itself, arrayed like a standing wave in the web of our communications. Ours is a world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but it is not where bodies live. View quote
John Perry Barlow
It's a perfect set of circumstances to give us the time Yeats foretold, with the best having lost all conviction and the worst full of passionate intensity. I'm an optimist. In order to be libertarian, you have to be an optimist. You have to have a benign view of human nature, to believe that human beings left to their own devices are basically good. View quote
John Perry Barlow