"If we had a mapping which took the fixed digicash bits onto the interesting parts of the fractal, then fake cash would not produce pretty pictures, while real cash would produce some part of a beautiful fractal. Again, you would have validation and beauty being tied together." — Hal Finney (The Beauty of ECash, 1994) #digitalcash #cryptography

"Privacy is necessary for an open society in the electronic age." — Eric Hughes (A Cypherpunk's Manifesto, 1993) #privacy #manifesto

"Free software is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of 'free' as in 'free speech,' not as in 'free beer.'" — Richard Stallman (GNU Project, 1985) #freesoftware #liberty #opensource

"By the 1990s, at the NSA at least, they figured out that it was impossible to totally snuff the stuff, and that there was a need for some form of crypto for citizens. So the idea was to keep the strong stuff out of general usage, by banning its export." — Steven Levy (The WELL - Crypto Discussion, 2001) #nsa #cryptography #exportlaws #government

"Computer technology is on the verge of providing the ability for individuals and groups to communicate and interact with each other in a totally anonymous manner." — Tim May (The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto, 1988) #anonymity #privacy

"Building security from day one is much easier than adding it on as an afterthought." — Martin Hellman (Charles Babbage Institute Oral History, 2004) #security

"Withdrawing into technology is like pulling the blankets over your head. It feels good for a while, until reality catches up. The next Clipper or Digital Telephony proposal will provide a rude awakening." — Hal Finney (Politics vs Technology, 1994) #politics #warning

"I wanted to empower people to make their own choices, to pursue their own happiness." — Ross Ulbricht (Letter to Judge Forrest, 2015) #freedom #empowerment

"Those with access to these resources — students, librarians, scientists — have been given an enormous privilege. You get to feed at this banquet of knowledge while the rest of the world is locked out." — Aaron Swartz (Guerilla Open Access Manifesto, 2008) #openaccess

"Cash is more than a method of payment. It is a fundamental tool for individual privacy and autonomy, and it is necessary for an open society." — Jerry Brito (The Case for Electronic Cash, 2019) #cash #privacy #autonomy #opensociety

"If we had a mapping which took the fixed digicash bits onto the interesting parts of the fractal, then fake cash would not produce pretty pictures, while real cash would produce some part of a beautiful fractal. Again, you would have validation and beauty being tied together." — Hal Finney (The Beauty of ECash, 1994) #digitalcash #cryptography

"Courage is contagious. If you demonstrate that individuals can leak something and go on to live a good life, it's tremendously incentivizing to people." — Julian Assange (Forbes, 2010) #whistleblowing

"There's a real possibility that all the noise about 'governance,' 'regulation' and 'blockchain' will effectively create a surveillance state, a dossier society." — Tim May (CoinDesk, 2018) #surveillance #regulation #blockchain #government

"It is tempting to try for the best of both worlds—to restrict the privacy of bad people while protecting that of good, permit governments to collect detailed information about us but only allow it to be used for good purposes. But somebody must decide who are the good people and the bad, what purposes are worthy or unworthy. Whoever that somebody is will have his own agenda, his own purposes. Angels are in short supply." — David D. Friedman (The Case for Privacy, 2005) #privacy #government #freedom

"Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence and thereby eventually lose all ability to defend ourselves and those we love." — Julian Assange (State and Terrorist Conspiracies, 2006)

"The cypherpunk movement provides an intelligible, viable, and effective model of data activism and strategic agency." — Patrick D. Anderson (Of Cypherpunks and Sousveillance, 2022) #cypherpunk #dataactivism #resistance #agency

"As we move to an increasingly online world in which physical cash is not practical for many transactions, we must also develop and foster electronic cash that is as privacy-preserving and permissionless as physical cash." — Jerry Brito (The Case for Electronic Cash, 2019) #electroniccash #privacy #permissionless #cryptocurrency

"The notion that we can just fade into cypherspace and ignore the unpleasant political realities is unrealistic, in my view." — Hal Finney (Politics vs Technology, 1994) #politics #cypherpunk

"The law enforcement folks were stuck longer in the hard-core phase, and still are, even now using Bin Laden to suggest that crypto has GONE TOO FAR, damn it." — Steven Levy (The WELL - Crypto Discussion, 2001) #lawenforcement #cryptography #government #terrorism

"Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves." — Aaron Swartz (Guerilla Open Access Manifesto, 2008) #openaccess