To be able to choose between proprietary software packages is to be able to choose your master. Freedom means not having a master.

Idiots can be defeated but they never admit it.

The idea of copyright did not exist in ancient times, when authors frequently copied other authors at length in works of non-fiction. This practice was useful, and is the only way many authors' works have survived even in part.

Sharing knowledge is the most fundamental act of friendship. Because it is a way you can give something without loosing something.

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.

If programmers deserve to be rewarded for creating innovative programs, by the same token they deserve to be punished if they restrict the use of these programs.

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.