“Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves.”

As the Internet breaks down the last justifications for a professional class of politicians, it also builds up the tools for replacing them.

Life is short … so why waste it doing something dumb?

Most people’s major life changes don’t come from reading an article in the newspaper; they come from reading longer-form essays or thoughtful books, which are much more convincing and detailed.

Think deeply about things. Don’t just go along because that’s the way things are or that’s what your friends say. Consider the effects, consider the alternatives, but most importantly, just think.

Only those blinded by greed would refuse to let a friend make a copy.

Creativity comes from applying things you learn in other fields to the field you work in.

Real education is about genuine understanding and the ability to figure things out on your own; not about making sure every 7th grader has memorized all the facts some bureaucrats have put in the 7th grade curriculum.

I don’t want to be happy. I just want to change the world.

There is no justice in following unjust laws. It’s time to come into the light and, in the grand tradition of civil disobedience, declare our opposition to this private theft of public culture.

The adults were completely wrong.

Steadfastness is a noble quality, but unguided by knowledge or humility, it becomes rashness, or obstinacy.

What is the most important thing you could be working on in the world right now? … And if you’re not working on that, why aren’t you?

There is no justice in following unjust laws.

Being around some of the bright lights of the technology world and having them expect great things helps you sit down and do it seriously.

Reality is painful — it’s so much easier to keep doing stuff you know you’re good at or else to pick something so hard there’s no point at which it’s obvious you’re failing — but it’s impossible to get better without confronting it.

With enough of us, around the world, we’ll not just send a strong message opposing the privatization of knowledge – we’ll make it a thing of the past.

More people, especially young people, are realising that if they want change, they’ve got to go about it themselves – they can’t depend on a particular person, ie me, to do all the work. They are less easy to fool than they used to be, they now know what’s going on all over the world.

Listen.’ For being saved is not the point. Music saves nothing. Merciful, uncaring, it denies and breaks down all the shelters, the houses men build for themselves, that they may see the sky.

It is not easy for a people conditioned by fear under the iron rule of the principle that might is right to free themselves from the enervating miasma of fear.

My work stops at publication. If the books don’t contain in themselves their reasons for being – questions and answers – it means I was wrong to have them published.

I must stop him from being one of those who call themselves good because they have no claws.

Impatient people, according to Bacon, are like the bees, and kill themselves in stinging others.

My job is to bring out in people what they wouldn’t dare do themselves.

Writers themselves don’t analyze what they do; to analyze would be to look down while crossing a canyon on a tightrope.