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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

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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
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More quotes by Lawrence Lessig

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There is nothing more dangerous than a government of the many controlled by the few.
Lawrence Lessig
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We always build on the past the past always tries to stop us.
Lawrence Lessig
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So uncritically do we accept the idea of property in ideas that we don't even notice how monstrous it is to deny ideas to a people who are dying without them.
Lawrence Lessig
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The popular choice is not elected as president.
Lawrence Lessig
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I'm all for experimenting with sortition - randomly selected representative bodies of citizens. But I don't favor direct democracy. We're busy. We have lives. There is reddit. Who has time to work out the right answer to the thousand policy choices a gov't must make all the time?
Lawrence Lessig
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All around us are the consequences of the most significant technological, and hence cultural, revolution in generations.
Lawrence Lessig
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Writing is the Latin of our times. The modern language of the people is video and sound.
Lawrence Lessig
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I'm a lawyer. I make lawyers for a living.
Lawrence Lessig
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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
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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
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Some may not like the Constitution's requirements, but that doesn't make the Constitution a pirate's charter.
Lawrence Lessig
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As I've indicated, most books go out of print within one year. The same is true of music and film. Commercial culture is sharklike. It must keep moving. And when a creative work falls out of favor with the commercial distributors, the commercial life ends.
Lawrence Lessig
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Before the monopoly should be permitted, there must be reason to believe it will do some good - for society, and not just for monopoly holders.
Lawrence Lessig
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I'm focused on solving the problem that would make it plausible for gov't to get back to solving real problems.
Lawrence Lessig
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[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
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One theme of what I've been writing has been to get people to understand that apolitical means you lose. It doesn't mean you live a utopian life free of politicians' influence. The destruction of the public domain is the clearest example, but it will only be the first.
Lawrence Lessig
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Why should it be that just when technology is most encouraging of creativity, the law should be most restrictive?
Lawrence Lessig
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If there were two candidates, a Democrat and a Republican, who each committed to the same kind of fundamental reform, then the election would be an election between the vice presidential candidates. It'd be just like the regular election, except it would be one step down.
Lawrence Lessig
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Creativity is enhanced by less-than-perfect control over what content is on the network.
Lawrence Lessig
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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