Bob Greene Quotes

All information belongs to everybody all the time. It should be available. It should be accessible to the child, to the woman, to the man, to the old person, to the semiliterate, to the presidents of universities, to everyone. It should be open.

Information wants to be free.

Organize all the world’s information and make it universally accessible whatever the consequences

If formerly restrictive regimes can be persuaded to see the free flow of information not as a threat to the power of sovereign states, but as the creator of a viable economic infrastructure and a population incentivised to take advantage of the new economy, the next century will be promising indeed.

Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing

The free flow of information is vital for economic development.

Progress in a globally interdependent society relies more than ever on the unimpeded flow of information.

If you want to publish data, you should do it to share knowledge.

Information wants to be free. Information also wants to be expensive.

Make information free for all.

We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with the world. We need to take stuff that's out of copyright and add it to the archive. We need to buy secret databases and put them on the Web. We need to download scientific journals and upload them to file sharing networks... With enough of us, around the world, we’ll not just send a strong message opposing the privatization of knowledge - we’ll make it a thing of the past. Will you join us?

Opening things up not closing them off is my job. I'm doing that for my reader. You know, Bob Gottlieb always says, "Criticism is a service industry." I take that very seriously. I do the research so I can tell you interesting things. It's not condescending, it's educational.

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... No one possesses the less, because every other possess the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.

People need to know what's going on. People need to wake up.

There is no world of absolute, complete privacy or a world of complete national security.

When I start running my mouth, I start running facts. I start giving guys numbers. I start giving guys ideas of where I come from and where I work.

My goal is to share information and to educate. But am I an activist? No, no, no. I don't believe in pushing things on people.

A governing ethos of the Internet has been that whatever flows through it - information, ideas - is up for grabs.

Portability of lots of information should not be underestimated.

If the knowledge is spread, it cannot be stamped out.

It is the mission of the printer to diffuse light and knowledge by a judicious intermingling of black with white.

The strongest human instinct is to impart information, the second strongest is to resist it.

Knowledge is power, which is why people who had it in the past often tried to make a secret of it. In post-capitalism, power comes from transmitting information to make it productive, not from hiding it.

In science, the whole system builds on people looking at other people's results and building on top of them. In witchcraft, somebody had a small secret and guarded it - but never allowed others to really understand it and build on it. Traditional software is like witchcraft. In history, witchcraft just died out. The same will happen in software. When problems get serious enough, you can't have one person or one company guarding their secrets. You have to have everybody share in the knowledge.

One of the great things about having good players in your band is that you just ask them questions. You can pick up some good information that way.