“It's not about what I want. It's about what's fair!”

—  movie The Dark Knight

Character Harvey Dent

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Related quotes

Oprah Winfrey photo

“I never think about what I want. It's about what you want to give to other people.”

Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist

As quoted in The Money Adventure (1998) by Egbert Sukop, p. 128

Nicholas Sparks photo
Thomas Sowell photo

“Since this is an era when many people are concerned about 'fairness' and 'social justice,' what is your 'fair share' of what someone else has worked for?”

Thomas Sowell (1930) American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author

Source: Dismantling America and Other Controversial Essays (2011), p.397

“I wrote because I wanted to know what everything was about.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Penguins and Golden Calves (2003)
Context: I wrote because I wanted to know what everything was about. My father, before I was born, had been gassed in the first World War, and I wanted to know why there were wars, why people hurt each other, why we couldn't get along together, and what made people tick. That's why I started to write stories.

Lawrence Lessig photo

“I will say the word: To hell with the fair uses. What about the unregulated uses we had of culture before this massive expansion of control?”

Lawrence Lessig (1961) American academic, political activist.

OSCON 2002
Context: Here's a simple copyright lesson: Law regulates copies. What's that mean? Well, before the Internet, think of this as a world of all possible uses of a copyrighted work. Most of them are unregulated. Talking about fair use, this is not fair use; this is unregulated use. To read is not a fair use; it's an unregulated use. To give it to someone is not a fair use; it's unregulated. To sell it, to sleep on top of it, to do any of these things with this text is unregulated. Now, in the center of this unregulated use, there is a small bit of stuff regulated by the copyright law; for example, publishing the book — that's regulated. And then within this small range of things regulated by copyright law, there's this tiny band before the Internet of stuff we call fair use: Uses that otherwise would be regulated but that the law says you can engage in without the permission of anybody else. For example, quoting a text in another text — that's a copy, but it's a still fair use. That means the world was divided into three camps, not two: Unregulated uses, regulated uses that were fair use, and the quintessential copyright world. Three categories.
Enter the Internet. Every act is a copy, which means all of these unregulated uses disappear. Presumptively, everything you do on your machine on the network is a regulated use. And now it forces us into this tiny little category of arguing about, "What about the fair uses? What about the fair uses?" I will say the word: To hell with the fair uses. What about the unregulated uses we had of culture before this massive expansion of control?

Jay McInerney photo
Carson McCullers photo

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