"Efforts to influence the government (e.g., lobbying and propaganda) are important only in so far as to delay its attempted crackdown long enough for the technology to mature and come into wide use." — Wei Dai (Cypherpunks mailing list, 1995) #lobbying

"Cash is also pretty good for privacy because there's no camera that can capture every movement of a dollar bill every time it moves; it just wouldn't work." — Peter Valkenburgh (Your Secret Right to Cash, 2017) #cash #privacy #surveillance #technology

"Cryptography rearranges power: it configures who can do what, from what. This makes cryptography an inherently political tool, and it confers on the field an intrinsically moral dimension." — Phillip Rogaway (The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work, 2015) #cryptography #politics

"Be interested in liberty and the freedom to transact and speak to get back to the original motivations. Don't spend time trying to make government-friendly financial alternatives." — Tim May (CoinDesk, 2018) #liberty #freedom #transactions #government

"There has never been a government that didn't sooner or later try to reduce the freedom of its subjects and gain more control over them, and there probably never will be one." — Wei Dai (Cypherpunks mailing list, 1995) #freedom #cypherpunk

"Bitcoin is a tool of resistance gifted to us by Satoshi. The idea has escaped and the idea of cryptocurrency will not be stopped." — Amir Taaki (The libbitcoin Manifesto, 2013) #bitcoin #resistance #cryptocurrency #freedom

"Money, like written language, was one of the most important inventions of civilization." — Nick Szabo (Shelling Out: The Origins of Money, 2002) #money #civilization #history

"The internet, our greatest tool of emancipation, has been transformed into the most dangerous facilitator of totalitarianism we have ever seen." — Julian Assange (Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet, 2012) #internet #surveillance #totalitarianism

"Talk is cheap. Show me the code." — Linus Torvalds (Linux Kernel Mailing List, 2000) #code #opensource

"Withdrawing into technology is like pulling the blankets over your head. It feels good for a while, until reality catches up. The next Clipper or Digital Telephony proposal will provide a rude awakening." — Hal Finney (Politics vs Technology, 1994) #politics #warning

"Proprietary software is an injustice. It denies users freedom and keeps them divided and helpless." — Richard Stallman (Free Software, Free Society, 2002) #proprietarysoftware #freedom

"Digital pseudonyms, the creation of persistent network personas that cannot be forged by others and yet which are unlinkable to the 'true names' of their owners, are finding major uses in ensuring free speech, in allowing controversial opinions to be aired, and in providing for economic transactions that cannot be blocked by local governments." — Tim May (Crypto Anarchy and Virtual Communities, 1994) #freespeech #anonymity #economics

"I am fascinated by Tim May's crypto-anarchy. Unlike the communities traditionally associated with the word 'anarchy', in a crypto-anarchy the government is not temporarily destroyed but permanently forbidden and permanently unnecessary." — Wei Dai (b-money proposal, 1998) #cryptoanarchy #bmoney #governance

"Technological ideas and technological things are not politically neutral: routinely, they have strong, built-in tendencies." — Phillip Rogaway (The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work, 2015) #politics

"Cypherpunk cryptography has been described as crypto with an attitude. But it is much more than that, for, more than anything else, what the cypherpunks wanted was crypto with values." — Phillip Rogaway (The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work, 2015) #cypherpunk #cryptography

"The scandal isn't how they're breaking the law. The scandal is that they don't have to break the law." — Edward Snowden (Joe Rogan Experience, 2019) #surveillance #law #government #legal

"The ecosystem is moving towards consolidation because users don't want to run their own servers." — Moxie Marlinspike (My First Impressions of Web3, 2022) #decentralization

"Bulk collection, which should become one of the dirtiest phrases in the language if we have any kind of decency." — Edward Snowden (Joe Rogan Experience, 2019) #surveillance #masssurveillance

"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." — John Gilmore (Time Magazine, 1993) #censorship #internet #freedom

"Technology has let the genie out of the bottle. Crypto anarchy is liberating individuals from coercion by their physical neighbors—who cannot know who they are on the Net—and from governments." — Tim May (Crypto Anarchy and Virtual Communities, 1994) #cryptoanarchy #freedom #government