Quote

My claim is that we should focus on the values of liberty... If there is not government to insist on those values, then who? ... The single unifying force should be that we govern ourselves.

Lawrence Lessig

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Lawrence Lessig
Age: 63
Born: 1961
Born: June 3
Computer Scientist
Jurist
Lawyer
Non-Fiction Writer
Political Activist
Politician
Professor
Teacher
Rapid City
South Dakota
Larry Lessig
Lester Lawrence Lessig III
Liberty
Values
Unifying
Force
Insist
Government
Govern
Claim
Claims
Single
Focus

More quotes by Lawrence Lessig

Image
While appropriation art is critical to art, it's an ambiguous art form in the world of the Supreme Court.
Lawrence Lessig
Image
I'm focused on solving the problem that would make it plausible for gov't to get back to solving real problems.
Lawrence Lessig
Image
Some may not like the Constitution's requirements, but that doesn't make the Constitution a pirate's charter.
Lawrence Lessig
Image
If the Internet teaches us anything, it is that great value comes from leaving core resources in a commons, where they're free for people to build upon as they see fit.
Lawrence Lessig
Image
We have a massive system to regulate creativity. A massive system of lawyers regulating creativity as copyright law has expanded in unrecognizable forms, going from a regulation of publishing to a regulation of copying.
Lawrence Lessig
Image
In these times, the hardest task for social or political activists is to find a way to get people to wonder again about what we all believe is true. The challenge is to sow doubt.
Lawrence Lessig
Image
You and I both know that as long as our representatives are held hostage to their funders - and their funders are not all of us - our system will not work
Lawrence Lessig
Image
I don't support direct democracy because I want a life, and that means I want to select people who work for me who do that sort of work for me.
Lawrence Lessig
Image
Law and technology produce, together, a kind of regulation of creativity we've not seen before.
Lawrence Lessig
Image
We established a regime that left creativity unregulated. Now it was unregulated because copyright law only covered printing. Copyright law did not control derivative work. And copyright law granted this protection for the limited time of 14 years.
Lawrence Lessig
Image
I'm pushing for citizen equality not because of some moral idea, but because this is the essential way to crack the corruption that now makes it so Washington can't work.
Lawrence Lessig
Image
The war against illegal file-sharing is like the church's age-old war against masturbation. It's a war you just can't win.
Lawrence Lessig
Image
I am a big supporter of experiments to complement representative gov't with randomly selected representative bodies of citizens, sure. I think most Americans would be surprised to learn just how much better we are at gov't than our gov't.
Lawrence Lessig
Image
A world where Congressmen spend 30 to 70 percent of their time raising money from a tiny, tiny fraction of the 1% is a world where that tiny, tiny fraction has enormous power. And it's that inequality in political power that enables this corrupted system to happen.
Lawrence Lessig
Image
Power runs with ideas that only the crazy would draw into doubt.
Lawrence Lessig
Image
If you are explaining, you're losing. It's a bumper sticker culture. People have to get it like that, and if they don't, if it takes three seconds to make them understand, you're off their radar screen. Three seconds to understand, or you lose. This is our problem.
Lawrence Lessig
Image
If the law imposed the death penalty for parking tickets, we'd not only have fewer parking tickets, we'd also have much less driving.
Lawrence Lessig
Image
A free culture is not a culture without property it is not a culture in which artists don't get paid. A culture without property, or in which creators can't get paid, is anarchy, not freedom. Anarchy is not what I advance here. Instead, the free culture that I defend in this book is a balance between anarchy and control.
Lawrence Lessig
Image
[Conservatives] go to church, they do lots of things for free for each other. They hold potluck dinners. ... They serve food to poor people. They share, they give, they give away for free. It's the very same people leading Wall Street firms who, on Sundays, show up and share.
Lawrence Lessig
Image
Writing is the Latin of our times. The modern language of the people is video and sound.
Lawrence Lessig