107+ Lawrence Lessig Quotes On Government, Education And Advocacy

Lawrence Lessig is an American political activist, academic, and author. He is best known for his work on copyright and the influence of money in politics. Lessig has founded several organizations, including Creative Commons, the Center for the Study of Constitutionalism at Harvard Law School, and Rootstrikers, a network of activists opposed to government corruption. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Lawrence Lessig on government, education, love.

Top 10 Lawrence Lessig Quotes

1. The danger in media concentration comes not from the concentration, but instead from the feudalism that this concentration, tied to the change in copyright, produces.
2. 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.
3. Creation always involves building upon something else. There is no art that doesn't reuse. And there will be less art if every reuse is taxed by the appropriator.
4. Monopoly controls have been the exception in free societies; they have been the rule in closed societies.
5. We are on the cusp of this time where I can say, "I speak as a citizen of the world" without others saying, "God, what a nut."
6. 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.
7. Of all the creative work produced by humans anywhere, a tiny fraction has continuing commercial value. For that tiny fraction, the copyright is a crucially important legal device.
8. Technology means you can now do amazing things easily; but you couldn't easily do them legally.
9. While the creative works from the 16th century can still be accessed and used by others, the data in some software programs from the 1990s is already inaccessible.
10. We always build on the past; the past always tries to stop us.

Lawrence Lessig Short Quotes

• Freedom is about stopping the past.
• Everybody's vote should count equally in the United States.
• There's no reason for the electors to overrule the popular choice.
• Law and technology produce, together, a kind of regulation of creativity we've not seen before.
• I'm a lawyer. I make lawyers for a living.
• Creativity is enhanced by less-than-perfect control over what content is on the network.
• Code plus law is combining to reduce rights consumers used to have.
• [Congress] and their cronies secure more than one hundred billion dollars in corporate welfare
• Money corrupts the process of reasoning.
• Power runs with ideas that only the crazy would draw into doubt.

Lawrence Lessig Quotes About Government

When you think about a presidential candidate spending all of his or her time talking to that tiny, tiny fraction of us who have the capacity to fund political elections, it's obvious why the perspective of government is skewed relative to what most Americans care about. — Lawrence Lessig

There is nothing more dangerous than a government of the many controlled by the few. — Lawrence Lessig

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

When government disappears, its not as if paradise will take its place. When governments are gone, other interests will take their place. — Lawrence Lessig

In a time of polarized politics there's one thing that more than ninety percent of Americans agree on, that our government is broken, and broken because of the money in politics. — Lawrence Lessig

Permission from the government is an expensive commodity. New ideas rarely have this kind of support. Old ideas often have deep legislative connections to defend them against the new. — Lawrence Lessig

Lawrence Lessig Quotes About Innovation

Notwithstanding the fact that the most innovative and progressive space we've seen - the Internet - has been the place where intellectual property has been least respected. You know, facts don't get in the way of this ideology. — Lawrence Lessig

Creativity and innovation always builds on the past. The past always tries to control the creativity that builds upon it. Free societies enable the future by limiting this power of the past. Ours is less and less a free society. — Lawrence Lessig

Overregulation stifles creativity. It smothers innovation. It gives dinosaurs a veto over the future. It wastes the extraordinary opportunity for a democratic creativity that digital technology enables. — Lawrence Lessig

Lawrence Lessig Famous Quotes And Sayings

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

I think if the copyright regime focuses on the people we are supposed to be helping, the artists and creators, and builds a system that gives them the freedom to choose and to protect and to be rewarded for their creativity, then we will have the right focus. — Lawrence Lessig

Copyright law has got to give up its obsession with 'the copy.' The law should not regulate 'copies' or 'modern reproductions' on their own. It should instead regulate uses--like public distributions of copies of copyrighted work--that connect directly to the economic incentive copyright law was intended to foster. — Lawrence Lessig

If the only way a library can offer an Internet exhibit about the New Deal is to hire a lawyer to clear the rights to every image and sound, then the copyright system is burdening creativity in a way that has never been seen before because there are no formalities. — Lawrence Lessig

Americans have been selling this view around the world: that progress comes from perfect protection of intellectual property. — Lawrence Lessig

This does not mean that every copyright must prove its value initially. That would be a far too cumbersome system of control. But it does mean that every system or category of copyright or patent should prove its worth. — Lawrence Lessig

A free culture is not a culture without property; it is not a culture in which artists don't get paid. — Lawrence Lessig

There are a lot of people who say we need to cut the amount of money that's spent in politics. I'm not sure that I agree. But I am sure that if you were talking about cutting the amount of money spent in politics, the media would have a strong interest in opposing you, because they make an enormous amount of money from political advertisements. — Lawrence Lessig

By the time Apple's Macintosh operating system finally falls into the public domain, there will be no machine that could possibly run it. The term of copyright for software is effectively unlimited. — Lawrence Lessig

Remember the refrain: We always build on the past; the past always tries to stop us. Freedom is about stopping the past, but we have lost that ideal. — Lawrence Lessig

Copyrights have not expired, and will not expire, so long as Congress is free to be bought to extend them again. — Lawrence Lessig

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

Some may not like the Constitution's requirements, but that doesn't make the Constitution a pirate's charter. — Lawrence Lessig

Now that copyrights can be just about a century long, the inability to know what is protected and what is not protected becomes a huge and obvious burden on the creative process. — Lawrence Lessig

My work about corruption is to get people to see it less as a moral issue (right/wrong) and more as an economic issue (economies of influence and their effect). — Lawrence Lessig

[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

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

The popular choice, by more than 2 million votes, is a completely qualified candidate for president. — Lawrence Lessig

Overregulation corrupts citizens and weakens the rule of law. — Lawrence Lessig

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

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

The current term of protection for software is the life of an author plus 70 years, or, if it's work-for-hire, a total of 95 years. This is a bastardization of the Constitution's requirement that copyright be for "limited times." — Lawrence Lessig

While the creative works from the 16th century can still be accessed and used by others, the data in some software programs from the 1990s is already inaccessible. Once a company that produces a certain product goes out of business, it has no simple way to uncover how its product encoded data. The code is thus lost, and the software is inaccessible. Knowledge has been destroyed. — Lawrence Lessig

There is a regulation of behavior on the Internet and in cyberspace, but that regulation is imposed primarily through code. The differences in the regulations effected through code distinguish different parts of the Internet and cyberspace. In some places, life is fairly free; in other places, it is more controlled. And the difference between these spaces is simply a difference in the architectures of control--that is, a difference in code. — Lawrence Lessig

There are very few people in our society who are actually free to say what they believe. I am in an extremely fortunate position in having this enormous gift of freedom and believe I should try to use it to do something useful for society. As long as I feel as if I have something to say, I’ll continue to try to do that. — Lawrence Lessig

Creativity builds upon the public domain. The battle that we're fighting now is about whether the public domain will continue to be fed by creative works after their copyright expires. That has been our tradition but that tradition has been perverted in the last generation. We're trying to use the Constitution to reestablish what has always been taken for granted--that the public domain would grow each year with new creative work. — Lawrence Lessig

"Writing" is the Latin of our times. The modern language of the people is video and sound. — Lawrence Lessig

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

But it is as silly to think about peer-to-peer as applying just to music as it would have been to think about the Internet as applying just to pornography. Whatever the initial use of the technology, it has nothing to do with the potential of the architecture to serve many other extremely important functions. — Lawrence Lessig

I think the archaic idea is actually winner take all, because the principle of "one person, one vote" is a principle that was introduced as a fundamental principle in American law in 1962, long after states had moved to "one person, one vote." — Lawrence Lessig

Here's what we [Americans] need: a 30 second you tube video of some guy at a party constantly checking out everyone else at the party, while he pretends to be speaking to the other person. We're the other person. The guy are the politicians. And the distraction is the corruption: We need a Congress that can afford to talk to us. For at least one drink or so. — Lawrence Lessig

Every generation welcomes the pirates from the last. — Lawrence Lessig

We live in a world with "free" content, and this freedom is not an imperfection. We listen to the radio without paying for the songs we hear; we hear friends humming tunes that they have not licensed. We tell jokes that reference movie plots without the permission of the directors. We read our children books, borrowed from a library, without paying the original copyright holder for the performance rights. — Lawrence Lessig

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

It might be crazy to expect a high government official to speak the truth. It might be crazy to believe that government policy will be something more than the handmaiden of the most powerful interests. It might be crazy to argue that we should preserve a tradition that has been part of our tradition for most of our history -- free culture. If this is crazy, then let there be more crazies. Soon. — Lawrence Lessig

We are a cut-and-paste culture. The aim of the protectionists is to argue that a cut-and-paste culture is criminal. Well, it's only criminal if there's nothing out there that you can freely cut and paste. If we increasingly mark material as available for these non-commercial uses, then people will have the opportunity to see its importance. — Lawrence Lessig

I am big supporter of the idea of a global anti-corruption movement - but one that begins by recognizing that the architecture of corruption is different in different countries. The corruption we suffer is not the same as the corruption that debilitates Africa. But it is both corruption, and both need to be eliminated if the faith in democracy is not going to be destroyed. — Lawrence Lessig

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

I spend as little time with lawmakers as possible. Many are great. And more than you expect want real change. But they're not going to do anything till we, the outsiders, force them to adopt it. — Lawrence Lessig

The principle, that should be a fundamental principle in our democracy, the principle of "one person, one vote," says that the vote of every American should count equally. And if it does, Hillary Clinton should be the president of the United States. — Lawrence Lessig

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

A free culture has been our past, but it will only be our future if we change the path we are on right now. — Lawrence Lessig

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

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

While appropriation art is critical to art, it's an ambiguous art form in the world of the Supreme Court. — Lawrence Lessig

Politics is that rare sport where the amateur contest is actually more interesting than the professional. — Lawrence Lessig

The popular choice is not elected as president. — Lawrence Lessig

The legal system doesn't work. Or more accurately, it doesn't work for anyone except those with the most resources. Not because the system is corrupt. I don't think our legal system (at the federal level, at least) is at all corrupt. I mean simply because the costs of our legal system are so astonishingly high that justice can practically never be done. — Lawrence Lessig

Believing we know what makes prosperity work, ignoring the nature of the actual prosperity all around, we change the rules within which the Internet revolution lives. These changes will end the revolution. — Lawrence Lessig

It's fine to talk about politics with people you agree with. But it is rude to argue about politics with people you disagree with. Political discourse becomes isolated, and isolated discourse becomes more extreme. — Lawrence Lessig

I advocate for protecting the liberty of the net, and securing privacy. I argue against people who believe both are somehow given automatically. They're not. — Lawrence Lessig

Winner take all does not exist in the Constitution. It's a restriction imposed on the electors by the states. — Lawrence Lessig

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

I'm focused on solving the problem that would make it plausible for gov't to get back to solving real problems. — Lawrence Lessig

The more important point, however, is not about what the money does. It's about what has to be done to get the money. The effect of the money might be (democratically) benign. But what is done to secure that money is not necessarily benign. To miss this point is to betray the Robin Hood fallacy: the fact that the loot was distributed justly doesn't excuse the means taken to secure it. — Lawrence Lessig

If zero percent of the elites support something, very low chance it's going to pass, if 100% support something, very high chance it's going to pass. Same thing for organized interest groups. But for the average voter, it's a flat line. Which says it doesn't matter whether zero percent of the public believes something or 100% of the average voters believe something - it doesn't affect the probability that that thing will be enacted. — Lawrence Lessig

One great feature of modern society is the institutionalized respect we give to processes designed to destroy the past. — Lawrence Lessig

All of the great Disney works took works that were in the public domain and remixed them. — Lawrence Lessig

There is still the illusion that if we could declare corporations are not people or that money is not speech, all would be solved. Regardless of the good in those ideas, it wouldn't. — Lawrence Lessig

For however much the state may gain by not having to fund roads on its own, society would lose in aggregate if the open commons of transportation were lost. — Lawrence Lessig

Why should it be that just when technology is most encouraging of creativity, the law should be most restrictive? — Lawrence Lessig

Show me why your regulation of culture is needed. Show me how it does good. And until you can show me both, keep your lawyers away. — Lawrence Lessig

While control is needed, and perfectly warranted, our bias should be clear up front: Monopolies are not justified by theory; they should be permitted only when justified by facts. If there is no solid basis for extending a certain monopoly protection, then we should not extend that protection. — Lawrence Lessig

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

Under the principle of equality, we should get as close to respecting equal votes of every citizen as we can, given our constitutional structure. And I think if we did that, then the will of the people would not be overturned. — Lawrence Lessig

There is a culture among academics to be obscure. If you're too clear, you can't be saying anything interesting. The issue isn't word length. The issue is a commitment to speaking in a way an audience can understand. — Lawrence Lessig

We ought to be respecting the principle of equality. — Lawrence Lessig

Legislation needs a better reason than that lawyers like it, and that America does it. — Lawrence Lessig

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

All around us are the consequences of the most significant technological, and hence cultural, revolution in generations. — Lawrence Lessig

Lawyers rarely test their power, or the power they promote, against this simple pragmatic question: "Will it do good?" When challenged about the expanding reach of the law, the lawyer answers, "Why not? — Lawrence Lessig

Change the way we fund campaigns. Until we do, Wall Street will always be able to blackmail the Dems and GOP to giving them what Wall Street wants. — Lawrence Lessig

So uncritically do we accept the idea of property in culture that we don't even question when the control of that property removes our ability, as a people, to develop our culture democratically. — Lawrence Lessig

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

The value of "one person, one vote," the value of equality, is a value that was given to us more than 50 years ago as a central part of our constitutional tradition. So, under that principle, we ought to be applying the same standard today that I would have said we should have applied a year ago. — Lawrence Lessig

And with a practice of writing comes a certain important integrity. A culture filled with bloggers thinks differently about politics or public affairs, if only because more have been forced through the discipline of showing in writing why A leads to B. — Lawrence Lessig

Companies will often use the legal system to scare people away from attacking them. But we all should be free to make critical statements about anybody, unless those statements are malicious. — Lawrence Lessig

I don't care if the Koch brothers or Soros spend their money to promote one candidate or another. I care about members of Congress spending 30%-70% of their time raising money from .05% of us. Change the way we fund elections and you change the corruption. — Lawrence Lessig

Life Lessons by Lawrence Lessig

1. Lawrence Lessig's work has taught us the importance of using the law to protect civil liberties and promote social justice.
2. He has also demonstrated the power of grassroots activism to effect change in the political system.
3. Finally, his work has shown us that it is possible to challenge the status quo and fight for a more equitable and just society.