We don't believe it's possible to protect digital content … What's new is this amazingly efficient distribution system for stolen property called the Internet — and no one's gonna shut down the Internet. And it only takes one stolen copy to be on the Internet. And the way we expressed it to them is: Pick one lock — open every door. It only takes one person to pick a lock. Worst case: Somebody just takes the analog outputs of their CD player and rerecords it — puts it on the Internet. You'll never stop that. So what you have to do is compete with it.

Nothing was more fascinating than information. It was infinite in quantity, or effectively so, limited only by the total entropy of the universe; it was vastly diverse and various; it was eternal; It was available for collection, anywhere and anytime. And, perhaps best of all, E. C. Tally thought with the largest amount of self-satisfaction that his circuits permitted, you never knew when it might come in useful.

Information is not like money or any other commodity. The cracks that it can slip through are almost infinitely small, and it can be duplicated at almost zero cost. Soon information will be like air, like the weather, and as easy to control.

There is unlimited demand for intelligence.

Everybody can take everything from you, but they cannot take what is in your head. Even if they burn your certificate, you will still have the knowledge and skills.

To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.

Survival...is an infinite capacity for suspicion.

Records are always made to be broken no matter what they are. Anybody can do anything that they set their mind to.

There are infinite possibilities.

[Imperfect information is ubiquitous.] People with more [or better] information can take advantage of people with less information, so exploitation becomes a real possibility.

Every collector is potentially (if not actually) a thief.

If you look back far enough, everything is stolen and every country invaded.

Imitation can acquire pretty much everything but the power which created the thing imitated.

For every fact there is an infinity of hypotheses.