Lawrence Lessig Quotes

The Internet isn't just itself a revolution - it sometimes starts them, too.

The structural changes of globalization and automation that has created concentrated wealth among some people who have had the right skills and the right opportunities has also created extraordinary disruption and havoc among the American middle-class.

This would only come if you have a revolutionary change in technology like the jet brought about.

If the whole U.S. was like Silicon Valley, we'd be in good shape. But now, the entire U.S. is not driven by technology, is not driven by innovation.

We should change the current economic system dominated by big business groups to a one where small and medium-sized enterprises develop together.

When a company is not being guided by the products they make and what the customers need, but by how they can manipulate the system - get regulations on their competitors, or mandates on using their products, or eliminating foreign competition - it just lowers the overall standard of living and hurts the disadvantaged the most.

Poverty is not socialism. To be rich is glorious.

Disruption is a critical element of the evolution of technology - from the positive and negative aspects of disruption a typical pattern emerges, as new technologies come to market and subsequently take hold.

I'm afraid for all those who'll have the bread snatched from their mouths by these machines. What business has science and capitalism got, bringing all these new inventions into the works, before society has produced a generation educated up to using them!

If the wealthy get wealthier, no one has to become one penny poorer.

I fear that light touch regulations that have allowed the Internet to prosper will now be replaced by a heavy hand that stifles innovation and does not adapt well to change. The Internet is not broken.

The notion of the Internet as a force of political and social revolution is not a new one. As far back as the early 1990s, in the early days of the World Wide Web, there were technologists and writers arguing forcefully that the Internet was destined to become the most important tool for cultural change in human history.

Capitalism inevitably and by virtue of the very logic of its civilization creates, educates and subsidizes a vested interest in social unrest.

The negative side to globalization is that it wipes out entire economic systems and in doing so wipes out the accompanying culture.

The aggregation of large fortunes is not at all a thing to be regretted.

Prosperity in human society is misunderstood. The difference between a rich and poor society is the number of problems that society solves for its citizens. That means technological innovation is the source of all prosperity, but with every tech innovation, you also get disruption - ultimately, social and civic disruption.

Free trade will bring widespread discontent. It will revolutionize values. It will take away more than one half the earning capacity of brain and brawn.

So, we have in America today, my friends, a condition by which about 10 men dominate the means of activity in at least 85 percent of the activities that you own. They either own directly everything or they have got some kind of mortgage on it, with a very small percentage to be excepted. They own the banks, they own the steel mills, they own the railroads, they own the bonds, they own the mortgages, they own the stores, and they have chained the country from one end to the other

You cannot create by decrees conditions which are alien to the very character of the existing economic relations.

All around us are the consequences of the most significant technological, and hence cultural, revolution in generations

What must be the character of that policy, which aims at national prosperity through the impoverishment of a large proportion of the home producers, with a view to supply foreigners at a cheaper rate, and give them all the benefit of the national privation and self denial?

We’ve had plenty of populist figures in our past, but they had a different degree of substance than Mr. Trump. William Jennings Bryan [the Democratic nominee for president in 1896, 1900 and 1908] came out of a period like today. The industrial revolution was like our tech revolution and globalization. The pace of life had sped up and made people anxious. Telegrams and telephones were fast. Immigration was huge. And Bryan’s supporters, like Trump’s, were fearful about the way the country was changing.

Historically, industrial revolutions haven't been kind to poor people. Despite the potential benefits technology can offer, the immediate impact on the lowest-paid members of society has often been negative.

As we contemplate a world which is still choosing to deploy technological innovation in a way that deepens inequality and divisions within and between nations, we need to set global foundations back on track.

When our economy is truly healthy, and everyone rises with the tide of prosperity, then issues such as the lack of affordable housing, homelessness, and hunger are greatly diminished.