Top 15 Richard Stallman Quotes

When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price.

With software there are only two possibilites: either the users control the programme or the programme controls the users. If the programme controls the users, and the developer controls the programme, then the programme is an instrument of unjust power.

I don’t have a problem with someone using their talents to become successful, I just don’t think the highest calling is success. Things like freedom and the expansion of knowledge are beyond success, beyond the personal. Personal success is not wrong, but it is limited in importance, and once you have enough of it it is a shame to keep striving for that, instead of for truth, beauty, or justice.

People said I should accept the world. Bullshit! I don't accept the world.

... totalitarian rulers, established parallel structures to work their will, bypassing rule-bound state structures that were less ready to follow shocking orders ...

If I'm the father of Open Source, it was conceived through artificial insemination using stolen sperm without my knowledge or consent.

You and I we exist for ourselves, fundamentally. We should care about others but each human being is a source of value, each human being deserves things. And so if you lose control over your computing, that's bad for you, directly bad for you. So my first reaction is to say: Oh, what a shame; I hope you recover the control over your computing and the way you do that is to stop using the non-free software.

Friend don't let companies spy on friends.

Any time I connect to a website other than Wikipedia, it's through Tor.

Using GPL is encroaching on our rights to encroach on yours.

I have to explain that I'm not an anarchist – I have a pro-state gland.

Friends share music with each other, they don't allow themselves to be divided by a system that says that nobody is supposed to have copies.

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.

Programming is programming. If you get good at programming, it doesn't matter which language you learned it in, because you'll be able to do programming in any language. The hard part of programming is the same regardless of the language. And if you have a talent for that, and you learned it here, you can take it over there. Oh, one thing: if you want to get a picture of a programming at its most powerful, you should learn Lisp or Scheme because they are more elegant and powerful than other languages.

Corporations don't have to be decent. Real persons, if they do something that's lawful but nasty you'll say 'you are a jerk, you are acting like a jerk, stop it!". But we are not supposed to ever say that to these phony people. We are supposed to say 'oh well, it's lawful so we'll just have to suffer it'.