Lawrence Lessig Quotes

Control over the use of one's ideas really constitutes control over other people's lives; and it is usually used to make their lives more difficult.

If a man is keeping an idea to himself, and that idea is taken by stealth or trickery-I say it is stealing. But once a man has revealed his idea to others, it is no longer his alone. It belongs to the world.

The net's future is far from assured, and history offers much warning. Within a few decades of Gutenberg's creation, princes and priests moved to restrict the right to print books.

If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone.

A lot of people are very sacred with their ideas, and there is something to protecting yourself in that way, but there's also something to idea sharing, or being the person who makes the mistake in public so people can study that.

Do not covet your ideas.

We are not smart enough to decide which pieces of knowledge are permissible and which are not.

It so often happened to me that someone who shared my opinion kept the larger share for himself that I am now forewarned and offer people only ideas.

The special harm attaching to prior restraint is that the government can keep materials from reaching the public, so there can be no accountability, no judgment by the people that the power to suppress was wrongly exercised.

The policy of the repression of ideas cannot work and never has worked. The alternative to it is the long difficult road of education. To this the American people have committed.

I like being around people who are good conversationalists. When there's a give and take, and you are heightening an idea, exploring it together, that is my favorite thing in the world. I love a small dinner party - let's say six people, max, where everybody's having the same conversation. That's my favorite thing in the world.

I did not call for the extermination of people, but of ideas.

If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented, and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today.

Books are flesh-and-blood ideas and cry out, silently, when put to the torch.

The studio's a collaborative environment. I just try to let people bring their own ideas to the songs and see what happens.

The only people who ever prize purity of ignorance are those who profit from a monopoly on knowledge.

I love being around people that contribute. It doesn't matter where the good idea comes from. A good idea is a good idea.

I generally enjoy the rehearsal process because that's where you can share your ideas, get your thoughts and feelings out and see whether or not they're going to land, whether or not people are going to agree with them, particularly the director. So you can sort out in that process any elements that need to be sorted out before you're on the set, and of course that saves time and it also makes everyone more comfortable working together.

We are not hiding things from the American people, but China everyday is conducting business in a way that hides things from their people.

It is always unconscionable for the government to punish people for expressing an idea merely because government officials - or the majority of citizens - decide that those ideas are 'dangerous' or 'wrong.' That is a power nobody ought to possess.

News is what people want to keep hidden and everything else is publicity.

Truth affirms freedom of speech. Putin is no friend of reli - freedom of speech. Putin is an enemy of freedom of religion. The U.S. celebrates freedom of religion. Putin is an enemy of the free press. The U.S. celebrates free press. Putin is an enemy of political dissent. The U.S. celebrates political dissent and the right for people to argue free from violence about places or ideas that are in conflict.

All people deserve respect, but not all ideas do.

If you speak up online and your ideas have currency, people are going to show up and want to connect with you. What we need more of are people with the guts and emotional labour to do this. The greatest shortage in today's society is an instinct to produce.

You can get really far by putting your ideas out there and letting other people build on them.