Playfully doing something difficult, whether useful or not, that is hacking.

If you want to accomplish something in the world, idealism is not enough - you need to choose a method that works to achieve the goal.

Snow is so beautiful, it doesn't have to be useful.

It's clear that other problems such as [...] the domination of business over government, science, thought, and society, are much bigger than non-free software.

Because I don't believe that it's really desirable to have security on a computer, I shouldn't be willing to help uphold the security regime.

EMACS could not have been reached by a process of careful design, because such processes arrive only at goals which are visible at the outset, and whose desirability is established on the bottom line at the outset. Neither I nor anyone else visualized an extensible editor until I had made one, nor appreciated its value until he had experienced it. EMACS exists because I felt free to make individually useful small improvements on a path whose end was not in sight.

Copying all or parts of a program is as natural to a programmer as breathing, and as productive. It ought to be as free.