"When government disappears, it's not as if paradise will take its place. When governments are gone, other interests will take their place."

Lawrence Lessig Politics See all quotes by Lawrence Lessig →

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“Law and technology produce, together, a kind of regulation of creativity we've not seen before.”

“IT Conversations - Audio programs featuring Lessig”

“One thing we know about incentives is you can't incent a dead person. No matter what we do, Hawthorne will not produce any more works, we can give him all the money in the world.”

“I've told a dark story. The truth is more mixed. A technology has given us a new freedom. Slowly, some begin to understand that this freedom need not mean anarchy. We can carry a free culture into the twenty-first century, without artists losing and without the potential of digital technology being destroyed. ... Common sense must revolt. It must act to free culture. Soon, if this potential is ever to be realized.”

“coverage of Lessig's opposition to the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act”

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Resonant Thoughts

"Government by emotion is identified with rule by tyranny."

— George Alec Effinger

Literature1947–2002

#politics

"That the atmosphere attracts to itself, like a lodestone, all the images of the objects that exist in it, and not their forms merely but their nature may be clearly seen by the sun, which is a hot and…"

— Leonardo da Vinci

Mathematics1452–1519

#nature

"When I became a reporter in the 60s in California, one of the very first lessons I learned was, your supposed to be watchdogging the government.... looking out for the taxpayers. If the politicians wa…"

— David Cay Johnston

Economics1948

#knowledge