Variant: I always say, better ask forgiveness than permission.
Source: Eragon
“Don't ask permission. If it does not work, you can apologize later.”
“It's easier to ask forgiveness than to beg for permission.”
Source: Lion's Heat
“It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission.”
As quoted in the U.S. Navy's Chips Ahoy magazine (July 1986)
As quoted in Built to Learn: The Inside Story of How Rockwell Collins Became a True Learning Organization (2003) by Cliff Purington, Chris Butler, and Sarah Fister Gale, p. 171
The future: Hardware, Software, and People in Carver https://books.google.com/books?id=5Q7uAAAAMAAJ, 1983
Actually attested since mid-19th century.
Variant: If it's a good idea, go ahead and do it. It is much easier to apologize than it is to get permission.
Variant: That brings me to the most important piece of advice that I can give to all of you: if you've got a good idea, and it's a contribution, I want you to go ahead and DO IT. It is much easier to apologize than it is to get permission.
Source: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2018/06/19/forgive/
The Way of Men (2012), The Bonobo Masturbation Society
“Change isn't made by asking permission. Change is made by asking forgiveness, later.”
Source: Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us
“The pike does not ask the frog’s permission before dining.”
Lini
(15 October 1994)
Interview with Richard Dawkins (5:12) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLctxRf7duU
“When I invented the web, I didn't have to ask anyone's permission.”
Berners-Lee T., Net Neutrality: This is Serious (June 2006) http://dig.csail.mit.edu/breadcrumbs/node/144
Context: When I invented the web, I didn't have to ask anyone's permission. Now, hundreds of millions of people are using it freely. I am worried that that is going end in the USA. … Democracy depends on freedom of speech. Freedom of connection, with any application, to any party, is the fundamental social basis of the Internet, and, now, the society based on it.
Let's see whether the United States is capable as acting according to its important values, or whether it is, as so many people are saying, run by the misguided short-term interested of large corporations.
I hope that Congress can protect net neutrality, so I can continue to innovate in the internet space. I want to see the explosion of innovations happening out there on the Web, so diverse and so exciting, continue unabated.
