Any powerful technology has sauce for the goose and the gander... It's just an extension of humanity.
--John Perry Barlow
But generally speaking, I felt to engage in the political process was to sully oneself to such a degree that whatever came out wasn't worth the trouble put in.
--John Perry Barlow
But groundless hope, like unconditional love, is the only kind worth having.
--John Perry Barlow
Google, Amazon, Apple. Any number of cloud providers and computer service providers who can increasingly limit your access to your own information, control all your processing, take away your data if they want to, and observe everything you do; in a way, that does give them some leverage over your own life.
--John Perry Barlow
How thin can I spread myself before I'm no longer 'there'?
--John Perry Barlow
I had always thought that the idea of love at first sight was one of those things invented by lady novelists from the South with three names.
--John Perry Barlow
I have yet to hear anyone say something that seemed likely to mitigate the idiocy of this age.
--John Perry Barlow
I look forward to the day when I can be Republican again.
--John Perry Barlow
I personally think intellectual property is an oxymoron. Physical objects have a completely different natural economy than intellectual goods. It's a tricky thing to try to own something that remains in your possession even after you give it to many others.
--John Perry Barlow
I think that humor is part of what saves us from despair.
--John Perry Barlow
I think the 'counterculture' believes that there are ways to manage being the world's most powerful country that involve creation of consensus- ruling by virtuous example rather than by force of arms.
--John Perry Barlow
I'm still strongly opposed to antismoking laws, strongly opposed to any law that regulates personal behavior.
--John Perry Barlow
If all ideas have to be bought, then you have an intellectually regressive system that will assure you have a highly knowledgeable elite and an ignorant mass.
--John Perry Barlow
If you have the 'Total Information Awareness' project working, it might be relatively easy to find everyone who had bought more than a ton of fertilizer and 500 gallons of diesel in the last year, which would be a great way of spotting potential Tim McVeighs- but it would also spot half the farmers and ranchers in America.
--John Perry Barlow
In Cyberspace, the First Amendment is a local ordinance.
--John Perry Barlow
Incompetence is a double-edged banana.
--John Perry Barlow
It's widely assumed that you can't compete with free, and that seems like a reasonable thing to think. But this has not been my experience.
--John Perry Barlow
Most libertarians are worried about government but not worried about business. I think we need to be worrying about business in exactly the same way we are worrying about government.
--John Perry Barlow
Most scientific revelations happened after the pursuit of knowledge quit being secret and hermetic.
--John Perry Barlow
Our universities are so determined to impose tolerance that they'll expel you for saying what you think and never notice the irony.
--John Perry Barlow
Relying on the government to protect your privacy is like asking a peeping tom to install your window blinds.
--John Perry Barlow
So I'm just waiting until one party or the other actually gets a moral compass and a backbone.
--John Perry Barlow
The 'Total Information Awareness' project is truly diabolical- mostly because of the legal changes which have made it possible in the first place. As a consequence of the Patriot Act, government now has access to all sorts of private and commercial databases that were previously off limits.
--John Perry Barlow
The government targets 'Anonymous' for the same reason it targets al-Qaida- because they're the enemy.
--John Perry Barlow
The Internet amplifies power in all respects. It can grossly exaggerate the power of the individual.
--John Perry Barlow
The Internet is the liberating tool for humanity ever invented, and also the best for surveillance. It's not one or the other. It's both.
--John Perry Barlow
The Internet may well disempower the nation state, but at the same time, it also strengthens certain specific state functions- like surveillance. As a political entity, it doesn't empower the nation sate. It creates the availability of much more data than the digestive system of the nation state could possibly assimilate.
--John Perry Barlow
The Internet treats censorship as a malfunction and routes around it.
--John Perry Barlow
The one thing that I know government is good for is countervailing against monopoly. It's not great at that either, but it's the only force I know that is fairly reliable.
--John Perry Barlow
TV in America created the most coherent reality distortion field that I've ever seen. Therein is the problem: People who vote watch TV, and they are hallucinating like a sonofabitch. Basically, what we have in this country is government by hallucinating mob.
--John Perry Barlow
We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.
--John Perry Barlow
We cannot separate the air that chokes from the air upon which wings beat.
--John Perry Barlow
We will create a civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before.
--John Perry Barlow
Found 33 occurence(s) in 52,059 quotation(s).