Aaron Swartz

“Say yes to everything.”

“Creativity comes from applying things you learn in other fields to the field you work in.”

“Nearly 75,000 Demand Progress members have urged Congress to fix the Patriot Act.”

“Real education is about genuine understanding and the ability to figure things out on your own; not about making sure every 7th grader has memorized all the facts some bureaucrats have put in the 7th grade curriculum.”

“Without the ability to talk about government power, there's no way for citizens to make sure this power isn't being misused.”

“Growing up, I slowly had this process of realizing that all the things around me that people had told me were just the natural way things were, the way things always would be, they weren’t natural at all. They were things that could be changed, and they were things that, more importantly, were wrong and should change, and once I realized that, there was really no going back.”

“We must erase bin Laden's ugly legacy, not extend it: by ending the Patriot Act's erosion of our civil liberties, we can protect the freedoms that make America worth fighting for.”

“Now, the typical way you make good things happen in Washington is you find a bunch of wealthy companies who agree with you.”

“I was around computers from birth; we had one of the first Macs, which came out shortly before I was born, and my dad ran a company that wrote computer operating systems. I don't think I have any particular technical skills; I just got a really large head start.”

“With the death of bin Laden, it's finally time for Congress to bring back the pre-9-11 legal norm, before we decided it was okay to toss out our civil liberties if the 'bad guys' were scary enough.”

“I'm not such a nuisance to the world, and the kick I get out of living can, I suppose, justify the impositions I make on it. But when life isn't so fun, well, then I start to wonder. What's the point of going on if it's just trouble for us both? My friends will miss me, I am told.”

“Assume nobody else has any idea what they're doing, either.”

“What if there was a library which held every book? Not every book on sale, or every important book, or even every book in English, but simply every book - a key part of our planet's cultural legacy.”

“Big stories need human stakes.”

“Being around some of the bright lights of the technology world and having them expect great things helps you sit down and do it seriously.”

“I have developed my most meaningful relationships online. None of them live within driving distance. None of them are about my own age.”

“We need to download scientific journals and upload them to file-sharing networks.”

“Social Security got passed because John D. Rockefeller was sick of having to take money out of his profits to pay for his workers' pension funds. Why do that, when you can just let the government take money from the workers?”

“Most people, it seems, stretch the truth to make themselves seem more impressive. I, it seems, stretch the truth to make myself look worse.”

“Seriously, who really cares how long the Nile river is, or who was the first to discover cheese? How is memorizing that ever going to help anyone? Instead, we need to give kids projects that allow them to exercise their minds and discover things for themselves.”