157 Quotes by Richard Stallman

If the users don’t control the program, the program controls the users. With proprietary software, there is always some entity, the “owner” of the program, that controls the program and through it, exercises power over its users. A nonfree program is a yoke, an instrument of unjust power.

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

I’m always happy when I’m protesting.

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.

Because I don’t believe that it’s really desirable to have security on a computer, I shouldn’t be willing to help uphold the security regime.

Free software is software that respects your freedom and the social solidarity of your community. So it’s free as in freedom.

The GNU GPL was not designed to be “open source”.

Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won’t leave you alone.

GNU, which stands for Gnu’s Not Unix, is the name for the complete Unix-compatible software system which I am writing so that I can give it away free to everyone who can use it.