Richard Stallman

You can use any editor you want, but remember that vi vi vi is the text editor of the beast.

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.

My decision [not to have children] probably reduced the 2050 population by 5 to 10 people.

Not having children is an important contribution to humanity.

Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone.

If the users don't control the program, the program controls the users.

We're heading for total disaster if we don't put an end to extreme capitalism and re-established democracy.

Well there is no God so that's not a really meaningful question.

I could have made money this way, and perhaps amused myself writing code. But I knew that at the end of my career, I would look back on years of building walls to divide people, and feel I had spent my life making the world a worse place.

Anything that prevents you from being friendly, a good neighbour, is a terror tactic.

I'm always happy when I'm protesting.

If programmers deserve to be rewarded for creating innovative programs, by the same token they deserve to be punished if they restrict the use of these programs.

Fighting patents one by one will never eliminate the danger of software patents, any more than swatting mosquitoes will eliminate malaria.

If in my lifetime the problem of non-free software is solved, I could perhaps relax and write software again. But I might instead try to help deal with the world's larger problems. Standing up to an evil system is exhilarating, and now I have a taste for it.

I see nothing unethical in the job it does. Why shouldn't you send a copy of some music to a friend?

'Free software' is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of 'free' as in 'free speech,' not as in 'free beer.'

If you want to accomplish something in the world, idealism is not enough – you need to choose a method that works to achieve the goal. In other words, you need to be 'pragmatic.'

Value your freedom or you will lose it, teaches history. 'Don't bother us with politics,' respond those who don't want to learn.

Whether gods exist or not, there is no way to get absolute certainty about ethics. Without absolute certainty, what do we do? We do the best we can.

One reason you should not use web applications to do your computing is that you lose control. It's just as bad as using a proprietary program.