Lawrence Lessig Quotes

The respected intellectuals are those who conform and serve power interests.

Our schools too often want to shut people up so they can't talk about real solutions. People who think differently tend to clam up because they think something is wrong with their ideas.

A heretic is a man who sees with his own eyes.

Be not astonished at new ideas; for it is well known to you that a thing does not therefore cease to be true because it is not accepted by many.

Men in authority will always think that criticism of their policies is dangerous. They will always equate their policies with patriotism, and find criticism subversive.

Everything popular is wrong.

A minority may be right. The majority is always wrong.

There are people who consider it almost unpatriotic to be inquisitive and to be truthful about your opinions.

I wasn't overwhelmed by dogma, and that sort of freed me up to look at things differently.

I haven't got a problem with sheeple calling me crazy. What's sane? What is crazy?

What you need is sustained outrage...there's far too much unthinking respect given to authority.

It is hard for power to enjoy or incorporate humour and satire in its system of control.

Dissent is the native activity of the scientist, and it has got him into a good deal of trouble in the last years. But if that is cut off, what is left will not be a scientist. And I doubt whether it will be a man.

I would say for the young: Don't be straight jacketed by ideology. Don't be driven by a structure of ideas.

The most unpardonable sin in society is independence of thought.

It is unacceptable that the system we rely on to develop children into well-adjusted, learned, cultured adults allows drones to dominate and increasingly devalues freethinkers.

Answers are not enough, students should be encouraged to ask questions and explore alternatives to the norm. Entrepreneurship and invention are the backbone of the new economy, yet I doubt they get more than a nod in economics courses.

I've always shied away from conventional wisdom, though I know the power of it.

Whenever anyone challenges anything, the powers that be try to paint them as extremists or radicals or whatever. And I think that's actually nonsense.

We're led to believe everybody opposes it and disagrees with political correctness, but yet everybody's scared to death of it. So who is it? Well, it's the power structure wherever you happen to be.

I've learned that I have to be happy with creating discussion and debate and that I shouldn't be trying to write a book that appeals to the consensus.

I do not say think as I think, but think in my way. Fear no shadows, least of all in that great spectre of personal unhappiness which binds half the world to orthodoxy.

You need a little bit of insanity to do great things.

When a man fails to see the truth of certain generally accepted views, there is no law compelling him to provoke animosity by announcing his dissent.

You have to be willing to ask questions that almost no one else would ask.