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Cory Doctorow
61 quotes
“I'm not a lawyer— I'm a kind of mouthpiece/activist type, though occasionally they shave me and stuff me into my Bar Mitzvah suit and send me to a standards body or the UN to stir up trouble. I spend about three weeks a month on the road doing completely weird stuff like going to Microsoft to talk about DRM.”
Cory Doctorow (born 1971) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Microsoft Research DRM talk (17 June 2004)
“It is a mistake to let aesthetics drive your rational decision making.”
Cory Doctorow (born 1971) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Pwned: How copyright turns us all into IP serfs", UNC iBiblio (22 February 2007)
“There's something to the idea of the autonomous character. Big chunks of our wetware are devoted to simulating other people, trying to figure out if we are likely to fight or fondle them. It's unsurprising that when you ask your brain to model some other person, it rises to the task. But that's exactly what happens to a reader when you hand your book over to him: he simulates your characters in his head, trying to interpret that character's actions through his own lens.”
Cory Doctorow (born 1971) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In Praise of Fanfic" in Locus (May 2007)
“I'm of the opinion that science fiction writers suck at predicting the future. We mostly go around describing the present in futuristic clothes - (such as) Mary Shelley, Bill Gibson, and many others.”
Cory Doctorow (born 1971) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Where is my flying car?", 3rd Degree (September 2007)
“Any time someone puts a lock on something you own against your wishes, and doesn't give you the key, they're not doing it for your benefit.”
Cory Doctorow (born 1971) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Digital Distribution and the Whip Hand: Don't Get iTunesed with your eBooks", O'Reilly (11 February 2009)
“The real damage from terrorist attacks doesn't come from the explosion. The real damage is done after the explosion, by the victims, who repeatedly and determinedly attack themselves, giving over reason in favor of terror. Every London cop who stops someone from taking a picture of a public building, every TSA agent who takes away your kid's toothpaste, every NSA spook who wiretaps your email, does the terrorist's job for him. Terrorism is about magnifying one mediagenic act of violence into one hundred billion acts of terrorized authoritarian idiocy.”
Cory Doctorow (born 1971) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: BBC photographer prevented from shooting St Paul's because he might be 'al Qaeda operative'" BoingBoing (30 November 2009)
“Open platforms and experimental amateurs … eventually beat out the spendy, slick pros. … Relying on incumbents to produce your revolutions is not a good strategy. They're apt to take all the stuff that makes their products great and try to use technology to charge you extra for it, or prohibit it altogether.”
Cory Doctorow (born 1971) first seen 2010 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Why I won't buy an iPad (and think you shouldn't, either)" on BoingBoing (2 April 2010)
“A tablet without software is just an inconveniently fragile and poorly reflective mirror, so the thing I want to be sure of when I buy a device is that I don't have to implicitly trust one corporation's judgment about what software I should and shouldn't be using.”
Cory Doctorow (born 1971) first seen 2011 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Why Samsung's Galaxy Tab is 'meh'" in The Guardian (25 July 2011)
“As someone once said, "Just because you're not interested in politics does not mean that politics won't be interested in you." And staying away from politics either because you think tech will make laws irrelevant or because there's no good way to influence laws just opens the field for people who don't cherish either of those illusions to make things very bad indeed.”
Cory Doctorow (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It's impossible to overstate how bonkers the idea of sabotaging cryptography is to people who understand information security. ... Use deliberately compromised cryptography, that has a back door that only the "good guys" are supposed to have the keys to, and you have effectively no security. You might as well skywrite it as encrypt it with pre-broken, sabotaged encryption.”
Cory Doctorow (born 1971) first seen 2015 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Encryption won't work if it has a back door only the 'good guys' have keys to" in The Guardian (1 May 2015)
“One form of math denial is the belief in the ability to make computers that prevent copyright infringement. Computers only ever work by making copies: restricting copying on the internet is like restricting wetness in water.”
Cory Doctorow (born 1971) first seen 2016 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The FBI wants a backdoor only it can use – but wanting it doesn't make it possible in The Guardian (24 February 2016)
“Anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop.”
Cory Doctorow (born 1971) first seen 2022 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Medium article title (November 20, 2022)
“Here is how platforms die: First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. I call this enshittification...”
Cory Doctorow (born 1971) first seen 2023 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The ‘Enshittification’ of TikTok" Wired (23 January 2023)
“..[Enshittification] is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a "two-sided market," where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.”
Cory Doctorow (born 1971) first seen 2023 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The ‘Enshittification’ of TikTok" Wired (23 January 2023)
“Right to repair has no cannier, more dedicated adversary than Apple, a company whose most innovative work is dreaming up new ways to sneakily sabotage electronics repair while claiming to be a caring environmental steward, a lie that covers up the mountains of e-waste that Apple dooms our descendants to wade through.”
Cory Doctorow (born 1971) first seen 2023 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Apple fucked us on right to repair (again)", Pluralistic (22 September 2023)
“AI cannot do your job, but an AI salesman can 100% convince your boss to fire you and replace you with an AI that can't do your job, and when the bubble bursts, the money-hemorrhaging "foundation models" will be shut off and we'll lose the AI that can't do your job, and you will be long gone, retrained or retired or "discouraged" and out of the labor market, and no one will do your job. AI is the asbestos we are shoveling into the walls of our society and our descendants will be digging it out for generations.”
Cory Doctorow (born 1971) first seen 2025 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The real (economic) AI apocalypse is nigh" Pluralistic: (27 September 2025)
“It’s logical,” Sario said. “Lots of people don’t like coping with logic when it dictates hard decisions. That’s a problem with people, not logic.”
Cory Doctorow (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How’s your parents?” She didn't manage to hide her smile. “Their weirdness is terminal.”
Cory Doctorow (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There are lots of things I try not to dwell upon. The fact that this is all my fault is one of those things.”
Cory Doctorow (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But she was one of those doctors who hadn’t gotten the memo from the American health-care system that says that you should only listen to a patient for three minutes, tops, before writing him a referral and/or a prescription and firing him out the door just as the next patient was being fired in.”
Cory Doctorow (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Okay, this is the thing. We spend all our time doing, you know, stuff. Maintenance. Ninety-eight percent of the day, all you’re doing is thinking about what you’re going to be doing to go on doing what you’re doing. Worrying about whether you’ve got enough socked away to see you through your old age without ending up eating cat food. Worrying about whether you’re getting enough fiber or eating too many carbs. It’s being alive, but it’s hardly living.”
Cory Doctorow (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It turns out that teaching is one of those things like raising a kid or working out—sometimes amazing, often difficult and painful, but, in hindsight, amazing.”
Cory Doctorow (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Existence proofs always trump theory. That’s engineering.”
Cory Doctorow (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He was a pushy, self-righteous , but that didn’t mean he was wrong. Necessarily.”
Cory Doctorow (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And don’t talk to me about having a positive attitude. The reason all those who’ve died of cancer croaked is because they had cancer, not because they were too gloomy.”
Cory Doctorow (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Things are true or they aren’t, no matter how old the person saying them happens to be.”
Cory Doctorow (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Doesn’t matter how old the speaker is, it’s the words that matter.”
Cory Doctorow (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Greg, what are you talking about? Ending corruption? Like there’s a version of this society that isn’t corrupt? Corruption isn’t the exception, it’s the norm. It’s baked in. The whole idea of using markets to figure out who gets what is predicated on corruption—it’s a way to paper over the fact that some people get a lot, most of us get not much, and so we invent a deus ex machina called market forces that hands out money based on merit. How do we know that the market is giving it to deserving people? Well, look at all the money they have! It’s just circular reasoning.”
Cory Doctorow (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It’s a bitch when someone reminds you of all the contradictions in your life, I know. Your discomfort doesn’t make what I’m saying any less true, though. Come on, you all know this is true. Late-stage capitalism isn’t reformable. It’s an idea whose time has passed.”
Cory Doctorow (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They just hated and feared us because our government hated and feared them.”
Cory Doctorow (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was nice to think that the key to feeding nine billion people was to measure by maximizing calories and minimizing misery, instead of minimizing capital investment and maximizing to shareholders.”
Cory Doctorow (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The problem isn’t that the world has the wrong kind of sellers; it’s that it has the wrong kind of buyers. Powerless, diffused, atomized, puny, and insubstantial.”
Cory Doctorow (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All evil in the world is the result of an imbalance between the people who benefit from shenanigans and the people who get screwed by shenanigans.”
Cory Doctorow (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Again, I was torn between the impulse to hang up on him and to hear more. Nosiness won (nosiness always wins; bets on nosiness are a sure thing).”
Cory Doctorow (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There were only two reasons to call me after something like this: to confess his sins or to get revenge. And no one would ever mistake me for a priest.”
Cory Doctorow (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Beautiful was not the opposite of terrible. The two could easily co-exist.”
Cory Doctorow (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Maybe it’s just an elaborate game of s and s that are all calibrated to the precise sociopathic degree necessary to convey empathy and ethics without ever descending into either.”
Cory Doctorow (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“First-time novelists have a tough row to hoe. Our publishers don’t have a lot of promotional budget to throw at unknown factors like us. Mostly, we rise and fall based on word-of-mouth.”
Cory Doctorow (born 1971) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A note about this book, January 9, 2003
“I lived long enough to see the cure for death; to see the rise of the Bitchun Society, to learn ten languages; to compose three symphonies; to realize my boyhood dream of taking up residence in Disney World; to see the death of the workplace and of work.”
Cory Doctorow (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Bitchun Society has had much experience with restores from —in the era of the cure for death, people live pretty recklessly. Some people get refreshed a couple dozen times a year.”
Cory Doctorow (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Bitchun Society had all but done away with any sort of dull, repetitious labor, and what remained—tending bar, mopping toilets—commanded Whuffie aplenty and a life of leisure in your off-hours.”
Cory Doctorow (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I think that if I’m still here in ten thousand years, I’m going to be crazy as hell. Ten thousand years, pal! Ten thousand years ago, the state-of-the-art was a goat. You really think you’re going to be anything recognizably human in a hundred centuries?”
Cory Doctorow (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I swore I'd be done, and that would be the end of it. And now I am. There isn't a single place left on-world that isn't part of the Bitchun Society. There isn't a single thing left that I want any part of.”
Cory Doctorow (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Lying on my hotel bed, mesmerized by the lazy turns of the ceiling fan, I pondered the possibility that I was nuts. It wasn’t unheard of, even in the days of the Bitchun Society, and even though there were cures, they weren’t pleasant.”
Cory Doctorow (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I’d seen how Imagineering worked when they were on their own, building prototypes and conceptual mockups—I knew that the real bottleneck was the constant review and revisions, the ever-fluctuating groupmind consensus of the ad-hoc that commissioned their work. Suneep looked sheepish. “Well, if all I have to do is satisfy myself that my plans are good and my buildings won’t fall down, I can make it happen very fast. Of course, my plans aren’t perfect. Sometimes, I’ll be halfway through a project when someone suggests a new flourish or approach that makes the whole thing immeasurably better.”
Cory Doctorow (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The universe gets older. So do I. So does my backup, sitting in redundant distributed storage dirtside, ready for the day that space or age or stupidity kills me. It recedes with the years, and I write out my life longhand, a letter to the me that I’ll be when it’s restored into a clone somewhere, somewhen. It’s important that whoever I am then knows about this year, and it’s going to take a lot of tries for me to get it right.”
Cory Doctorow (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Engineers are all basically high-functioning autistics who have no idea how normal people do stuff.”
Cory Doctorow (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Larry poured himself a coffee. "I hate when they come in here with computers. They sit forever at their tables, and they don't talk to nobody, it's like having a place full of statues or zombies.”
Cory Doctorow (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Christ, you're dragging me out for that? I can tell you what they'll say. They'll drag out the Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse: kiddie porn, terrorists, pirates, and the mafia. They'll tell us that any tool for communicating that they can't tap, log, and switch off is irresponsible. They'll tell us we're stealing from ISPs. It's what they say every time someone tries this: Philly, New York, London. All around the world same song.”
Cory Doctorow (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All secrets become deep. All secrets become dark. That's in the nature of secrets.”
Cory Doctorow (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source