Those in authority tend to be annoyed by hackers’ general attitude of disobedience. But that disobedience is a byproduct of the qualities that make them good programmers.

The government spying on people doesn’t literally make programmers write worse code. It just leads eventually to a world in which bad ideas will win. And because this is so important to hackers, they’re especially sensitive to it. They can sense totalitarianism approaching from a distance, as animals can sense an approaching thunderstorm.

We think that this is not a good way of head-hunting for highly skilled people, but they (hackers) have to be punished and educated in prison, and when they are done with their punishment, it’s then that they can be considered as skills to society.

In 1971 when I joined the staff of the MIT Artificial Intelligence lab, all of us who helped develop the operating system software, we called ourselves hackers. We were not breaking any laws, at least not in doing the hacking we were paid to do. We were developing software and we were having fun. Hacking refers to the spirit of fun in which we were developing software. The hacker ethic refers to the feelings of right and wrong, to the ethical ideas this community of people had — that knowledge should be shared with other people who can benefit from it, and that important resources should be utilized rather than wasted. Back in those days computers were quite scarce, and one thing about our computer was it would execute about a third-of-a-million instructions every second, and it would do so whether there was any need to do so or not. If no one used these instructions, they would be wasted. So to have an administrator say, "well you people can use a computer and all the rest of you can't," means that if none of those officially authorized people wanted to use the machine that second, it would go to waste. For many hours every morning it would mostly go to waste. So we decided that was a shame. Anyone should be able to use it who could make use of it, rather than just throwing it away. In general we did not tolerate bureaucratic obstructionism. We felt, "this computer is here, it was bought by the public, it is here to advance human knowledge and do whatever is constructive and useful." So we felt it was better to let anyone at all use it — to learn about programming, or do any other kind of work other than commercial activity.

That's the thing about people who think they hate computers … What they really hate are lousy programmers.

If any of you have ever looked at your FBI file, you discover that intelligence agencies in general are extremely incompetent. That's one of the reasons why there are so many intelligence failures. They just never get anything straight, for all kinds of reasons. Part of it is because of the information they get. The information they get comes from ideological fanatics, typically, who always misunderstand things in their own crazy way. If you look at an FBI file, say, about yourself, where you know what the facts are, you'll see that the information has some kind of relation to the facts, you can figure out what they're talking about, but by the time it works its way through the ideological fanaticism of the intelligence agencies, there's always weird distortion.

We hackers are a playful bunch; we'll hack anything, including language, if it looks like fun (thus our tropism for puns). Deep down, we like confusing people who are stuffier and less mentally agile than we are, especially when they're bosses. There's a little bit of the mad scientist in all hackers, ready to discombobulate the world and flip authority the finger – especially if we can do it with snazzy special effects.

There are people who actually like programming. I don't understand why they like programming.

They don't want clever men; clever men have ideas, and ideas cause trouble; they want men who have charm and tact and who can be counted on never to make a blunder.

"E assim, quando os geeks e os tecnólogos defendem as tecnologias dos novos Armstrongs ou irmãos Wright, muitos de nós nos tornamos simplesmente hostis. O bom senso não fica revoltado. Diferentemente como no caso dos coitados dos Causbys, o bom senso está do lado dos donos das propriedades nessa guerra. Diferentemente dos afortunados irmãos Wright, a Internet não inspirou uma revolução do nosso lado.
A minha esperança é trazer o bom senso de volta ao nosso lado. Estou cada vez mais impressionado com o poder de tal idéia de propriedade intelectual, e mais ainda, com seu poder para bloquear o pensamento crítico feito contra os poderosos. Jamais houve em nossa história um período em que tanto da nossa "cultura" tinha um "dono" como atualmente. E nunca antes houve um período aonde a concentração de poder para controlar os usos da cultura foi tão inquestionavelmente aceita como o é atualmente."

I cannot pry into motives. I only know of the existence of great extra-social intelligences. Let us say that they distrust the machine. They may be idealists and desire to make a new world, or they may simply be artists, loving for its own sake the pursuit of truth. If I were to hazard a guess, I should say that it took both types to bring about results, for the second find the knowledge and the first the will to use it.

To write good software you must simultaneously keep two opposing ideas in your head. You need the young hacker’s naive faith in his abilities, and at the same time the veteran’s skepticism. You have to be able to think how hard can it be? with one half of your brain while thinking it will never work with the other.

Wisdom. No match for the troublemaker Curiosity.

The C.I.A. was never satisfied with the F.B.I. and, can't blame them," the former official said. "We did hit or miss jobs... "We just went through the motions on our investigation. It was just a brushoff.