"I would like to argue, however, that unless we tell others effectively about our results, even the greatest science results are to little avail."

--Ivan Valiela, Woods Marine Biological Laboratory

"If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."

--Sir Isaac Newton

"We should all be concerned about the future, because we will have to spend the rest of our lives there."

--Charles Kettering

"I believe that the most useful and novel inventions and improvements of the present day are mere progressive steps in a highly wrought and highly advanced system suggested by, and dependent on, other previous steps, their whole value and the means of their application probably dependent on the success of some or many other inventions, some old, some new."

--Isambard Kingdon Brunel

"All the great empires of the future will be empires of the mind."

--Winston Churchill

"This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don't give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do."

-- Woody Guthrie
Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land"

"Our hope is that this project will inspire similar efforts at other institutions and will reinforce the concept that ideas are best viewed as the common property of all of us, not as proprietary products intended to generate profits."

--William and Flora Hewlett Foundation president Paul Brest, commenting on the foundation's support for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's OpenCourseWare initiative.

"Information is "in the public domain" to the extent that no person has a right to exclude anyone else from using the specified information in a particular way. In other words, information is in the public domain if all users are equally privileged to use it."

--From Yochai Benkler's Free As the Air to Common Use, First Amendment Constraints on Enclosure of the Public Domain, 73 NYU. L. Rev. No. 2, May, 1999.

"He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me."

--Thomas Jefferson

"What am I then? What have I accomplished? Everything that I have seen, heard, and observed I have collected and exploited. My works have been nourished by countless different individuals, by innocent and wise ones, people of intelligence and dunces. Childhood, maturity and old age all have brought me their thoughts, . . their perspectives on life. I have often reaped what others have sowed. My work is the work of a collective being that bears the name of Goethe."

--Goethe talking to a friend in 1832 [cited in College English, Vol 57, No. 7 (Nov 1995) p.769]

"Poetry can only be made out of other poems; novels out of other novels,"

--Northrop Frye

"Whenever there is a conflict between human rights and property rights, human rights must prevail."

--Abraham Lincoln

"The preservation of the means of knowledge among the lowest ranks is of more importance to the public than all the property of the rich men in the country."

--John Adams (1735-1826)

"For the more there are who say 'Ours,'-not 'Mine'- by that much is each richer ."

--Dante on the joys of sharing (Purgatorio, XV)

"Diffused knowledge immortalizes itself" Vindici? Gallic?.

--Sir James Mackintosh. 1765-1832.

"The primary objective of copyright is not to reward the labor of authors, but to 'promote the progress of science and useful arts. To this end, copyright assures authors the right to their original expression, but encourages others to build freely upon the ideas and information conveyed by a work. This result is neither unfair nor unfortunate. It is the means by which copyright advances the progress of science and art."

--Sandra Day O'Connor, Feist Publications vs. Rural Telephone Service, 1991