Whether gods exist or not, there is no way to get absolute certainty about ethics. Without absolute certainty, what do we do? We do the best we can.

If programmers deserve to be rewarded for creating innovative programs, by the same token they deserve to be punished if they restrict the use of these programs.

The desire to be rewarded for one’s creativity does not justify depriving the world in general of all or part of that creativity.

Value your freedom or you will lose it, teaches history. ‘Don’t bother us with politics’, respond those who don’t want to learn.

Fighting patents one by one will never eliminate the danger of software patents, any more than swatting mosquitoes will eliminate malaria.

If you want to accomplish something in the world, idealism is not enough – you need to choose a method that works to achieve the goal.

Anything that prevents you from being friendly, a good neighbour, is a terror tactic.

I could have made money this way, and perhaps amused myself writing code. But I knew that at the end of my career, I would look back on years of building walls to divide people, and feel I had spent my life making the world a worse place.

The idea of copyright did not exist in ancient times, when authors frequently copied other authors at length in works of non-fiction. This practice was useful, and is the only way many authors’ works have survived even in part.

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.

There is nothing wrong with wanting pay for work, or seeking to maximize one’s income, as long as one does not use means that are destructive.

People sometimes ask me if it is a sin in the Church of Emacs to use vi. Using a free version of vi is not a sin; it is a penance. So happy hacking.

All governments should be pressured to correct their abuses of human rights.

The paradigm of competition is a race: by rewarding the winner, we encourage everyone to run faster. When capitalism really works this way, it does a good job; but its defenders are wrong in assuming it always works this way.

Whether gods exist or not, there is no way to get absolute certainty about ethics. Without absolute certainty, what do we do? We do the best we can.

The reason that a good citizen does not use such destructive means to become wealthier is that, if everyone did so, we would all become poorer from the mutual destructiveness.