Top 15 Cory Doctorow Quotes

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

We are the people of the book. We love our books. We fill our houses with books. We treasure books we inherit from our parents, and we cherish the idea of passing those books on to our children. Indeed, how many of us started reading with a beloved book that belonged to one of our parents? We force worthy books on our friends, and we insist that they read them. We even feel a weird kinship for the people we see on buses or airplanes reading our books, the books that we claim. If anyone tries to take away our books — some oppressive government, some censor gone off the rails — we would defend them with everything that we have. We know our tribespeople when we visit their homes because every wall is lined with books. There are teetering piles of books beside the bed and on the floor; there are masses of swollen paperbacks in the bathroom. Our books are us. They are our outboard memory banks and they contain the moral, intellectual, and imaginative influences that make us the people we are today.

When in trouble or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.

If you stare at someone long enough, they'll eventually look back at you.

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

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

He hated it when adults told him he only felt the way he did because he was young. As if being young was like being insane or drunk, like the convictions he held were hallucinations caused by a mental illness that could only be cured by waiting five years.

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.

It's our goddamed city! It's our goddamed country. No terrorist can take it from us for so long as we're free. Once we're not free, the terrorists win! Take it back! You're young enough and stupid enough not to know that you can't possibly win, so you're the only ones who can lead us to victory! Take it back!

It's the stupid questions that have some of the most surprising and interesting answers. Most people never think to ask the stupid questions.

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

"Most of the people you see going to work today are LARPing (live-action role playing) an incredibly boring RPG (role-playing game) called "professionalism" that requires them to alter their vocabulary, posture, eating habits, facial expressions — every detail all the way down to what they allow themselves to find funny."

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

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.

If you want to double your success rate, triple your failure rate.