Jimmy Wales Quotes

Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing.

Simply having rules does not change the things that people want to do. You have to change incentive.

You shouldn't use anything as the sole source for anything, in my view.

I'm a big advocate of freedom: freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom of thought.

Given enough time humans will screw up Wikipedia just as they have screwed up everything else, but so far it's not too bad.

My original concept was to provide a free encyclopedia for every single person in the world.

To me the key thing is getting it right. And if a person's really smart and they're doing fantastic work I don't care if they're a high school kid or a Harvard professor, it's the work that matters.

The real struggle is not between the right and the left but between the party of the thoughtful and the party of the jerks.

I have always viewed the mission of Wikipedia to be much bigger than just creating a killer website. We're doing that of course, and having a lot of fun doing it, but a big part of what motivates us is our larger mission to affect the world in a positive way

Free speech includes the right to not speak.

We are still in the very beggining of the Internet. Let's use it wisely.

What can we put into the hands of people under oppressive regimes to help them? For me, a big part of it is information, knowledge - the ability to defeat propaganda by understanding it.

Wikipedia is a non-profit. It was either the dumbest thing I ever did or the smartest thing I ever did.

I think that reality exists and that it's knowable.

I tend to eat things in fours. I'll eat four nuts, four grapes, four chips at a time. I don't know why. It's not really a superstition. I don't think anything bad will happen if I don't, but three potato chips doesn't seem right.

People are not fundamentally bad. It only takes the smallest of correctives to take care of that tiny minority that wants to disrupt the community.

I think people have to recognise that the traditional modes of authority weren't that great.

People do fun and interesting things because they're fun and interesting.

There's a big tendency to gravitate toward a closed and proprietary approach too easily.

Wikipedia is first and foremost an effort to create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language. Asking whether the community comes before or after this goal is really asking the wrong question: the entire purpose of the community is precisely this goal.

Most people assume the fights are going to be the left versus the right, but it always is the reasonable versus the jerks.

Things work well when a group of people know each other, and things break down when it's a bunch of random people interacting.

There's plenty of rude stuff online. People say things online that they would be ashamed to say face to face. If people could treat others as though they were speaking face to face, that would be huge.

Love. It isn't very popular in technical circles to say a lot of mushy stuff about love, but frankly it's a very very important part of what holds our project together.

Everybody tells jokes, but we still need comedians.