Top 35 John Perry Barlow Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “If you’re not lost, you’re not much of an explorer.”

— John Perry Barlow

2. “When cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl.”

— John Perry Barlow

3. “I have always felt that no matter how inscrutable its ways and means, the universe is working perfectly and working according to a greater plan than we can know.”

— John Perry Barlow

4. “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

5. “I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.”

— John Perry Barlow

6. “The future’s here, we are it, we are on our own.”

— John Perry Barlow

7. “Incompetence is a double-edged banana.”

— John Perry Barlow

8. “The real issue is control. The Internet is too widespread to be easily dominated by any single government. By creating a seamless global economic zone, anti-sovereign and unregulatable, the Internet calls into question the very idea of a nation-state.”

— John Perry Barlow

9. “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

10. “Hope does not always require probability.”

— John Perry Barlow

11. “We cannot separate the air that chokes from the air upon which wings beat.”

— John Perry Barlow

12. “I may be going to hell in a bucket Babe, at least I’m enjoying the ride.”

— John Perry Barlow

13. “God’s jokes are the soul’s curriculum.”

— John Perry Barlow

14. “New solutions win by virtue of adoption, and they don’t get adopted if they’re bad solutions.”

— John Perry Barlow

15. “The first serious infowar is now engaged. The field of battle is WikiLeaks. You are the troops.”

— John Perry Barlow

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16. “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

17. “I don’t know that I believe in the supernatural, but I do believe in miracles, and our time together was filled with the events of magical unlikelihood.”

— John Perry Barlow

18. “Royalties are not how most writers or musicians make their living. Musicians by and large make a living with a relationship with an audience that is economically harnessed through performance and ticket sales.”

— John Perry Barlow

19. “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

20. “I’m still strongly opposed to antismoking laws, strongly opposed to any law that regulates personal behavior.”

— John Perry Barlow

21. “I’m a member of that half of the human race which is inclined to divide the human race into two kinds of people. My dividing line runs between the people who crave certainty and the people who trust chance.”

— John Perry Barlow

22. “Out of the ashes of the music business, comes the rebirth of the musician business.”

— John Perry Barlow

23. “We are in the middle of the most transforming technological event since the capture of fire.”

— John Perry Barlow

24. “Art is a service, not a product. Created beauty is a relationship, and a relationship with the Holy at that. Reducing such work to ‘content’ is like praying in swear words. End of Sermon. Back to business.”

— John Perry Barlow

25. “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

26. “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

27. “The more you’ve got, the shorter it feels.”

— John Perry Barlow

28. “I mean I look forward to the day when I can be Republican again.”

— John Perry Barlow

29. “Everyone seems to be playing well within the boundaries of his usual rule set. I have yet to hear anyone say something that seemed likely to mitigate the idiocy of this age.”

— John Perry Barlow

30. “One can imagine the government’s problem. This is all pretty magical stuff to them. If I were trying to terminate the operations of a witch coven, I’d probably seize everything in sight. How would I tell the ordinary household brooms from the getaway vehicles?”

— John Perry Barlow

31. “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

32. “Humanity seems bent on creating a world economy primarily based on goods that take no material form. In doing so, we may be eliminating any predictable connection between creators and a fair reward for the utility others may find in their works.”

— John Perry Barlow

33. “So I’m just waiting until one party or the other actually gets a moral compass and a backbone.”

— John Perry Barlow

34. “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

35. “In Cyberspace, the First Amendment is a local ordinance.”

— John Perry Barlow

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36. “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

37. “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

38. “The Corporate impulse for human uniformity instills shame at difference and, thus, the contemporary zeal for privacy.”

— John Perry Barlow

39. “One may as well be optimistic. The road to catastrophe will be rougher if it’s paved with dread.”

— John Perry Barlow