Bill Gates Quotes

Even with censorship, the Internet is a force for change.

There are a lot of people that think the Internet is going to bring information and democracy and pluralism in China just by existing.

The virtual world is a 'public square' much more vast than Tiananmen Square. And you can't send in the tanks to crush the netizens.

A free and open Internet is a despot's worst enemy.

One could think of ways to defeat the censor. I could put up the answers on my Facebook page or website or Counterpunch. In today's world it's not easy to suppress information. Technology has helped us a great deal.

I think we should not control the Internet.

The Internet treats censorship as a malfunction and routes around it.

The thing I have come to find astonishing is that people from all political sides routinely say that the Internet has to be the model of free speech and freedom.

I study how governments seek to stifle and control online dissent.

The user in China wants the same thing that any Internet user wants - privacy in conversations, maximum access to information, and the ability to speak their minds online.

The Internet enables us to share the ideas we have without having to create another hierarchy.

Disclosure and transparency are the currency of the Internet, and they are at odds with authoritarianism.

Countries that have the Internet already are not going to turn it off. And so the power of freedom, the power of ideas will spread, and it will change those societies in very dramatic ways.

The internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.

Information on the Internet must be as free as in the newspapers.

The internet, Facebook and Twitter have created mass communications and social spaces that regimes cannot control.

What's profound and exciting is the way young people are taking advantage of the fact that the Internet enables everyone to have a megaphone. It enables everyone to stand up and say, 'I deserve to be heard, and I demand that you listen.'

The Internet in China is fully open and the Chinese Government manages the Internet according to the law. As for what you can and cannot watch, watch what you can watch, and don’t watch what you cannot watch.

Washington faces a simple choice: allow the Internet to remain as an engine of innovation, a platform for speech in even the harshest tyrannies, and a unified connection for people across the globe—or cede control of the Internet to service providers motivated by their parochial interests.

In addition to all the good things it's done, the Internet has empowered an awful lot of people who would have been best off disempowered, including quite a few bloggers on both sides.

One of the great debates about the Internet is whether it is making people more or less free.

Experience has shown us that attempts to control the Internet will invariably fail. We should be instructed by the failed efforts of China to regulate political content, the efforts of America to regulate Internet gambling, or the efforts of Australia to regulate certain speech. By its very nature, the Internet will always resist such controls.

I draw a distinction between freedom of the internet and freedom via the internet. In the first case, it's making sure cyberspace is not over regulated and people can say what they want without fear of repercussions. But that's different from this freedom via the internet notion, which is often touted by all sorts of conservatives and neoconservatives who want young people in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world to use Facebook and Twitter and then go oppose their governments.

We’re at a point in history that whether the Internet is going to evolve in a way that’s compatible with democracy and human rights is really kind of up in the air.

Access to the outside world is preventing more censorship. I do think information flow is happening in China. .. There's no doubt in my mind that it's been a huge plus.