“The inflexibility of the laws, which prevents them from adapting themselves to circumstances, may, in certain cases, render them disastrous, and make them bring about, at a time of crisis, the ruin of the State.” - Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“He who fights with monsters should see to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

“The Bitcoin network has been running for almost a year now. The design and coding started in 2007.” - Satoshi Nakamoto

“We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true.” - Robert Wilensky

“Cypherpunks deplore regulations on cryptography, for encryption is fundamentally a private act. The act of encryption, in fact, removes information from the public realm. Even laws against cryptography reach only so far as a nation's border and the arm of its violence. Cryptography will ineluctably spread over the whole globe, and with it the anonymous transactions systems that it makes possible.” - Cypherpunk Manifesto

“Obsessing about things is important, and things really do matter, but if you can't let go of them, you'll end up crazy.” - Linus Torvalds

“I've been working on a new electronic cash system that's fully peer-to-peer, with no trusted third party.” - Satoshi Nakamoto

“Governments are good at cutting off the heads of a centrally controlled networks like Napster, but pure P2P networks like Gnutella and Tor seem to be holding their own.” - Satoshi Nakamoto

“I don't know if I can live on my income or not - the government won't let me try it.” - Bob Thaves

“Silk Road has already made an impact on the war on drugs. The effect of the war is to limit people's access to controlled substances. Silk Road has expanded people's access.” - Ross Ulbricht

“In order to rally people, governments need enemies. They want us to be afraid, to hate, so we will rally behind them. And if they do not have a real enemy, they will invent one in order to mobilize us.” - Thích Nhất Hạnh

“We are NOT beasts of burden to be taxed and controlled and regulated. WE are free spirits! We DEMAND respect!” - Ross Ulbricht

“Bitcoin has the efficiency of a dictator without the moral hazard of being human.” - Obi Nwosu

“Governments make laws, but whether they are carried out, and how the police behave, depends on the general temper in the country. If large numbers of people are interested in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it; if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them.” - George Orwell

“Sound money allows people to think about the long term and to save and invest more for the future. Saving and investing for the long run are the key to capital accumulation and the advance of human civilization.” - Saifedean Ammous

“Law could never, by determining exactly what is noblest and must just for one and all, enjoin upon them that which is best; for the differences of men and of actions and the fact that nothing, I may say, in human life is ever at rest, forbid any science whatsoever to promulgate any simple rule for everything and for all time.” - Plato

“Take the resort to clandestine operations in foreign policy: that means the creation of a powerful central state immune from public inspection. Or take the increased efforts at censorship and other forms of control. All of these are called "conservatism," but they're the very opposite of conservatism. Whatever the term means, it involves a concern for Enlightenment values of individual rights and freedoms against powerful external authorities such as the state, a dominant church, and so on. That kind of conservatism no one even remembers anymore.” - Noam Chomsky

“Government was intended to suppress injustice, but it offers new occasions and temptations for the commission of it.” - William Godwin

“When you consider socialism, do not fool yourself about its nature. Remember that there is no such dichotomy as “human rights” versus “property rights.” No human rights can exist without property rights.” - Ayn Rand

“Poverty is a solved problem - all they have to do is abolish taxes and regulations which cripple those intelligent, capable, and responsible men and women and destroy their productive capacity, then stand back and watch the economy boom.” - L. Neil Smith