Lawrence Lessig Quotes

We have to be that wedge that drives the question and asks the hard questions.

Skepticism cannot be revolutionary, even though it speaks the language of revolution.

It's the job of intellectuals and writers to cast doubt on perfection.

Whenever anybody gets involved in politics, its always exciting for me because we take for granted our freedoms and our abilities to effect change through political activism.

In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.

My parents always went to rallies and demonstrated against certain things; my generation, we often have a political conscience, but we're not that involved.

Just by making a decision to stay out of politics, you are making the decision to allow others to shape politics and exert power over you. And if you are alienated from the current political system, then just by staying out of it, if you do nothing to change it, you simply entrench it.

I'm part of an important movement that needs to happen.

I think you have to ask yourself does voting work on the level that you are trying to effectuate change; that is the conversation you must have.

I think that politics needs a bit of spicing up.

You can't always measure the effects of activist work; you just have to wish and pray that the message gets through.

I'm not ready to give you a clear answer on whether electoral politics holds any particular hope for progressives. It would mean that nothing I did ever mattered.

You don't choose a party because it's the flavour of the month. I feel I will be able to work under a political system. I feel if people like me don't enter politics to bring change, who will?

When I turned 18, was the first time that I really started concentrating on politics. And I started doing so because I realized that in order to really create and generate change, it has to come from changing laws... so I started campaigning for Norman Lear's foundation, which was Declare Yourself.

I can't imagine myself outside any kind of social or political involvement.

Philosophers have interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it

The goal in the end is not to win elections. The goal is to change society.

The signs and banners of protesters are the zoom lenses by which we can focus on the difficult issues of a society.

I was taught from a very early age that it was probably the most American thing you can do is to question what's going on and to try to fix things that you see that aren't right. I believed that as a young person, and I believe that today.

If people don't vote, everything stays the same. You can protest until the sky turns yellow or the moon turns blue, and it's not going to change anything if you don't vote.

I've always been political.

You would be naive to suggest that politics isn't complicated or isn't a game, but you don't create change through cynicism.

Another of the qualities of science is that it teaches the value of rational thought, as well as the importance of freedom of thought; the positive results that come from doubting that all the lessons are true... Learn from science that you must doubt the experts. As a matter of fact, I can also define science another way: Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.

To me, activism requires you to try very hard to open your eyes to the world as it is. See as much as you can, knowing that whatever you see is going to be partial. That you possess a partial consciousness in an infinite and expanding universe.

I do think that my generation is really smart and wants to have political conversations, and so I hope that we can continue spreading our ideas and being able to change how our systems work. So, I guess being an all-American to me is being someone who questions things.