Quotes about license
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Willis Lamb photo
Warren E. Burger photo
Titian photo

“I should be acting the part of an ungrateful servant, unworthy of the favours which unite my duty to your great kindness, if I were not to say that his Majesty [ Charles V ] forced me to go to him and pays the expenses of my journey, I start discontented because I have not fulfilled your wish and my obligation in presenting myself to my Lord [ Pope Paul III ] and yours, and working in obedience to his intentions [to paint the Pope's portrait].... But I promise as a true servant to pay interest on my return with a new picture in addition to the first.... So with your license, Padron mio unico, I shall go, whither I am called, and returning with the grace of God, I shall serve you with all the strength of the talents which I got from my cradle..”

Titian (1488–1576) Italian painter

In a letter to Cardinal Farnese in Rome, from Venice 24th December 1547; after the original in Rochini's 'Belazione' u.s. pp. 9-10; as quoted in Titian: his life and times - With some account of his family... Vol. 2., J. A. Crowe & G.B. Cavalcaselle, Publisher London, John Murray, 1877, pp. 164-165
Titian had to chose between Pope & Emperor when they were on the worst of terms; he decided to obey the Emperor Charles V who ordered Titian to come to his court at Augsburg, Germany
1541-1576

Ernest Hemingway photo

“Only one marriage I regret. I remember after I got that marriage license I went across from the license bureau to a bar for a drink. The bartender said, "What will you have, sir?"”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

And I said, "A glass of hemlock."
Pt. 2, Ch. 5
Papa Hemingway (1966)

Raghuram G. Rajan photo

“Indeed, if what you do offends me but does not harm me otherwise, there should be a very high bar for prohibiting your act. After all, any ban, and certainly any vigilante acts to enforce it, may offend you as much, or more, than the offence to me. Excessive political correctness stifles progress as much as excessive license and disrespect.”

Raghuram G. Rajan (1963) Indian economist

On excessive political correctness and bans, as quoted in " Hasty bans hinder progress: Raghuram Rajan http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/hasty-bans-hinder-progress-raghuram-rajan/article7827092.ece", The Hindu (31 October 2015)

“[H]aving problems is not a license to vote stupid. People need the tractor to plow the damn field, now.”

Mike Murphy (political consultant) (1962) American political consultant

As quoted in "Debriefing Mike Murphy" https://www.weeklystandard.com/matt-labash/debriefing-mike-murphy (18 March 2016), by Matt Labash, The Weekly Standard
2010s

Christopher Hitchens photo
Abbie Hoffman photo
Gunnar Myrdal photo
Steve Ballmer photo

“Linux is not in the public domain. Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches. That's the way that the license works.”

Steve Ballmer (1956) American businessman who was the chief executive officer of Microsoft

" Microsoft CEO takes launch break with the Sun-Times https://web.archive.org/web/20011108013601/http://www.suntimes.com/output/tech/cst-fin-micro01.html" (1 June 2001) Chicago Sun Times
2000s

Michael Badnarik photo
Greg Giraldo photo
Jimmy Wales photo

“We are going to change the [GNU] Free Documentation License in such a way that Wikipedia will be able to become licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License. And so this is not, as some people speculated on Facebook my 50th birthday party. This is a party to celebrate the liberation of Wikipedia.”

Jimmy Wales (1966) Wikipedia co-founder and American Internet entrepreneur

Announcing that the Wikimedia Foundation Board has voted to enable Wikipedia to be licensed under a Creative Commons license. "Wikipedia to be Licensed Under Creative Commons" (30 November 2007) http://blog.jamendo.com/index.php/2007/12/01/breaking-news-wikipedia-switches-to-creative-commons/

Henry Adams photo

“As a type for study, or a standard for education, Lodge was the more interesting of the two. Roosevelts are born and never can be taught; but Lodge was a creature of teaching — Boston incarnate — the child of his local parentage; and while his ambition led him to be more, the intent, though virtuous, was — as Adams admitted in his own case — restless. An excellent talker, a voracious reader, a ready wit, an accomplished orator, with a clear mind and a powerful memory, he could never feel perfectly at ease whatever leg he stood on, but shifted, sometimes with painful strain of temper, from one sensitive muscle to another, uncertain whether to pose as an uncompromising Yankee; or a pure American; or a patriot in the still purer atmosphere of Irish, Germans, or Jews; or a scholar and historian of Harvard College. English to the last fibre of his thought — saturated with English literature, English tradition, English taste — revolted by every vice and by most virtues of Frenchmen and Germans, or any other Continental standards, but at home and happy among the vices and extravagances of Shakespeare — standing first on the social, then on the political foot; now worshipping, now banning; shocked by the wanton display of immorality, but practicing the license of political usage; sometimes bitter, often genial, always intelligent — Lodge had the singular merit of interesting. The usual statesmen flocked in swarms like crows, black and monotonous. Lodge's plumage was varied, and, like his flight, harked back to race. He betrayed the consciousness that he and his people had a past, if they dared but avow it, and might have a future, if they could but divine it.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

“many seemingly independent businessmen or craftsman are more or less well paid retainers of larger corporations, such as the cobbler, operating a United States shoe machine or an automobile dealer holding a license of the General Motors Corporation.”

Paul A. Baran (1909–1964) American Marxist economist

Source: The Political Economy Of Growth (1957), Chapter Four, Standstill and Movement Under Monopoly Capitalism, II, p. 84

John McCain photo

“While our Party has bestowed upon him the nomination, it is not accompanied by unfettered license to defame those who are the best among us.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

2010s, 2016, Statement regarding the Khan family (1 August 2016)

Richard Stallman photo
Desmond Morris photo

“I had no idea what I was doing when I wrote Search. There was no carefully designed work plan. There was no theory that I was out to prove. I went out and talked to genuinely smart, remarkably interesting, first-rate people. I had an infinite travel budget that allowed me to fly first class and stay at top-notch hotels and a license from McKinsey to talk to as many cool people as I could all around the United States and the world.
I went to see Karl Weick, who had totally influenced my life. I had read his work a thousand times, and I'd never met him. I went to Oslo to talk with Einar Thorsrud, who had studied empowerment on oil tankers. I went to the Tavistock Institute in London, where the leading thinkers on organizational development were looking at why people work together effectively in team configurations under certain circumstances.
Word of the meeting got back to McKinsey USA, and I was invited to give a presentation to the top management of PepsiCo… The time was drawing near for the Pepsi presentation to take place. One morning at about 6, I sat down at my desk overlooking the San Francisco Bay from the 48th floor of the Bank of America Tower, and I closed my eyes. Then I leaned forward, and I wrote down eight things on a pad of paper. Those eight things haven't changed since that moment. They were the eight basic principles of Search.”

Tom Peters (1942) American writer on business management practices

Tom Peters (2001) "Tom Peters's True Confessions" in Fast Company, December 2001 ( online http://www.fastcompany.com/44077/tom-peterss-true-confessions, Nov 31, 2001).

Rupert Boneham photo
Richard Stallman photo
Henry Adams photo
Newton Lee photo
Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Harry Chapin photo

“I never really drove a cab, but I do have a hack license in case of emergencies – like no money.”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

"Chapin Takes 'Taxi' Wherever He Can", Rolling Stone http://harrychapin.com/articles/rsprofile.shtml (July 6, 1972)

J.M. Coetzee photo
Leon R. Kass photo

“The history of the Democratic Party can be concisely captured by referring to its steadfast allegiance to the four Ss. Slavery, Secession, Segregation, and Socialism. During the Obama presidency we have seen how hard old habits die, even for a black man whose race was the long-time victim of Democratic Party's bone-deep authoritarianism. Under this Democratic president we have seen a war waged on several fronts against America's young. Indeed, the Democrats' historic taste for and belief in slavery have resurfaced with a vengeance and indiscriminately under the Obama administration, whether white, black, yellow, red, male, or female America's young are dying and being forced to work for Obama and his lieutenants as they seek to maintain their party's hold on political power. How so? Well, America has never had a president and administration so eager to kill unborn Americans. Even with post-1973 science having proved irrefutably that the unborn are human beings, and even though American law always has defined them as U. S. citizens, Obama and his colleagues have strengthened at every point they could the absurd notion that unborn humans are the chattel property of the woman who bears them, and so can be disposed of, that is, murdered, at her whim. And, in what must be considered a masterpiece of Orwellian language, Obama and his team, and most Democrats since 1973, describe this federal government-issued license to kill as a woman's 'right', a means by which she manifests her equality with men. They then damn any one who questions the logic, sanity, or justice of this argument as an 'extremist'. Only in an America in which a political entity as devoted to the four 'Ss' as the Democratic Party could opposition to the cold-blooded murder of fellow citizens unable defend themselves be identified by the country’s best-educated as 'extremism'. If this is indeed a right, it is a right gives each woman the right to be a slave-owner and a Nazi. Such a 'right' really is no different than the rights sanctioned by the Dred Scott decision and the Nuremberg laws, each of which legally defined certain categories of people out of the human race in order to enslave or kill them. Since 1973, the application of this 'right' has produced precisely the same results as Dred Scott and the Nuremberg laws, though in numbers so immense, 55 million and climbing, that they make those acts seem rather tame and minimally destructive of humans.”

Michael Scheuer (1952) American counterterrorism analyst

As quoted in "Obama and his party offer America's young … death, misery, and slavery" http://non-intervention.com/1143/obama-and-his-party-offer-america%E2%80%99s-young-%E2%80%A6-death-misery-and-slavery/ (21 November 2013), by M. Scheuer, Michael Scheuer's Non-Intervention.
2010s

Lucy Mack Smith photo
Friedrich Engels photo

“Political economy came into being as a natural result of the expansion of trade, and with its appearance elementary, unscientific huckstering was replaced by a developed system of licensed fraud, an entire science of enrichment.”

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) German social scientist, author, political theorist, and philosopher

Die Nationalökonomie entstand als eine natürliche Folge der Ausdehnung des Handels, und mit ihr trat an die Stelle des einfachen, unwissenschaftlichen Schachers ein ausgebildetes System des erlaubten Betrugs, eine komplette Bereicherungswissenschaft.
Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy (1844)

Mike Lange photo

“(Insert Goaltender here) just lost his liquor license.”

Mike Lange (1948) Canadian sportscaster

As noted on Sportscenter's Top 10 Mike Lange Calls (2nd Version) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgl3jGPEOto

Voltairine de Cleyre photo
Sam Harris photo

“I think it [getting a gun] should be like getting a pilot's license. I think you should require training to get a license to have a gun.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Sam Harris, Real Time with Bill Maher (February 1, 2013)
2010s

George Fitzhugh photo

“The bestowing upon men equality of rights, is but giving license to the strong to oppress the weak. It begets the grossest inequalities of condition.”

George Fitzhugh (1806–1881) American activist

Source: Sociology For The South: Or The Failure Of A Free Society (1854), p. 233

Frances Kellor photo
Hillary Clinton photo

“For 40 years, everyone running for president has released their tax returns. You can go and see nearly, I think, 39, 40 years of our tax returns, but everyone has done it. We know the IRS has made clear there is no prohibition on releasing it when you're under audit. So you've got to ask yourself, why won't he release his tax returns? And I think there may be a couple of reasons. First, maybe he's not as rich as he says he is. Second, maybe he's not as charitable as he claims to be. Third, we don't know all of his business dealings, but we have been told through investigative reporting that he owes about $650 million to Wall Street and foreign banks. Or maybe he doesn't want the American people, all of you watching tonight, to know that he's paid nothing in federal taxes, because the only years that anybody's ever seen were a couple of years when he had to turn them over to state authorities when he was trying to get a casino license, and they showed he didn't pay any federal income tax. So if he's paid zero, that means zero for troops, zero for vets, zero for schools or health. And I think probably he's not all that enthusiastic about having the rest of our country see what the real reasons are, because it must be something really important, even terrible, that he's trying to hide. And the financial disclosure statements, they don't give you the tax rate. They don't give you all the details that tax returns would. And it just seems to me that this is something that the American people deserve to see. And I have no reason to believe that he's ever going to release his tax returns, because there's something he's hiding.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), First presidential debate (September 26, 2016)

Susan Faludi photo
John Milton photo

“License they mean when they cry, Liberty!
For who loves that must first be wise and good.”

John Milton (1608–1674) English epic poet

On the Detraction which followed upon my writing certain Treatises, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

John Maynard Keynes photo
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton photo
Felix Frankfurter photo

“A court which yields to the popular will thereby licenses itself to practice despotism, for there can be no assurance that it will not on another occasion indulge its own will.”

Felix Frankfurter (1882–1965) American judge

Concurring, American Federation of Labor v. American Sash & Door Co., 335 U.S. 538, 557 (1949).
Judicial opinions

Jeffrey Montgomery photo
John Godfrey Saxe photo
Amy Goodman photo

“[The media] are using a national treasure--that's what the public airwaves are. And they have a responsibility to bring out the full diversity of opinion or lose their licenses.”

Amy Goodman (1957) American broadcast journalist, syndicated columnist, investigative reporter and author

2008 Winter Soldier Testimony http://ivaw.org/wintersoldier/testimony/aims-global-war-terror-political-legal-and-economic-context-iraq-and-afghan-0.

Jimmy Wales photo

“Freely licensed textbooks are the next big thing in education.”

Jimmy Wales (1966) Wikipedia co-founder and American Internet entrepreneur

While talking about Wikibooks project; TED - Jimmy Wales: How a ragtag band created Wikipedia http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jimmy_wales_on_the_birth_of_wikipedia.html, July 2005

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston photo
Rick Santorum photo
John Middleton Murry photo
Jef Raskin photo

“If books were sold as software and online recordings are, they would have this legalese up front:
The content of this book is distributed on an 'as is' basis, without warranty as to accuracy of content, quality of writing, punctuation, usefulness of the ideas presented, merchantability, correctness or readability of formulae, charts, and figures, or correspondence of (a) the table of contents with the actual contents, (2) page references in the index (if any) with the actual page numbering (if present), and (iii) any illustration with its adjacent caption. Illustrations may have been printed reversed or inverted, the publisher accepts no responsibility for orientation or chirality. Any resemblance of the author or his or her likeness or name to any person, living or dead, or their heirs or assigns, is coincidental; all references to people, places, or events have been or should have been fictionalized and may or may not have any factual basis, even if reported as factual. Similarities to existing works of art, literature, song, or television or movie scripts is pure happenstance. References have been chosen at random from our own catalog. Neither the author(s) nor the publisher shall have any liability whatever to any person, corporation, animal whether feral or domesticated, or other corporeal or incorporeal entity with respect to any loss, damage, misunderstanding, or death from choking with laughter or apoplexy at or due to, respectively, the contents; that is caused or is alleged to be caused by any party, whether directly or indirectly due to the information or lack of information that may or may not be found in this alleged work. No representation is made as to the correctness of the ISBN or date of publication as our typist isn't good with numbers and errors of spelling and usage are attributable solely to bugs in the spelling and grammar checker in Microsoft Word. If sold without a cover, this book will be thinner than those sold with a cover. You do not own this book, but have acquired only a revocable non-exclusive license to read the material contained herein. You may not read it aloud to any third party. This disclaimer is a copyrighted work of Jef Raskin, first published in 2004, and is distributed 'as is', without warranty as to quality of humor, incisiveness of commentary, sharpness of taunt, or aptness of jibe.”

Jef Raskin (1943–2005) American computer scientist

"If Books Were Sold as Software" http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&dateissued=20040818#11200, NewsScan.com (18 August 2004)
If Books Were Sold as Software (2004)

“I've been lucky since I've had this job, getting two amazingly dramatic moments like that. You sort of had a license to go to nine or ten on the Richter scale.”

Ian Darke (1950) British association football and boxing commentator

2010s, 2014, Voice of the Americans (2014)

Robert A. Heinlein photo
John Milton photo

“None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license.”

John Milton (1608–1674) English epic poet

Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1649)

Susan Sontag photo

“The voices licensed to follow the event seem to have joined together in a campaign to infantilize the public.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

On the September 11, 2001 attacks The New Yorker: Talk of the Town (24 September 2001) https://archive.is/20130630002651/www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/010924ta_talk_wtc?010924ta_talk_wtc
Context: The voices licensed to follow the event seem to have joined together in a campaign to infantilize the public. Where is the acknowledgment that this was not a "cowardly" attack on "civilization" or "liberty" or "humanity" or "the free world" but an attack on the world's self-proclaimed superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions? How many citizens are aware of the ongoing American bombing of Iraq? And if the word "cowardly" is to be used, it might be more aptly applied to those who kill from beyond the range of retaliation, high in the sky, than to those willing to die themselves in order to kill others. In the matter of courage (a morally neutral virtue): whatever may be said of the perpetrators of Tuesday's slaughter, they were not cowards.

Bill Moyers photo

“But what it meant in politics a century later, and still means today, is the freedom to accumulate wealth without social or democratic responsibilities and license to buy the political system right out from everyone else.”

Bill Moyers (1934) American journalist

"For America's Sake" speech (12 December 2006), as quoted in Moyers on Democracy (2008), p. 17
Context: Reagan's story of freedom superficially alludes to the Founding Fathers, but its substance comes from the Gilded Age, devised by apologists for the robber barons. It is posed abstractly as the freedom of the individual from government control — a Jeffersonian ideal at the roots of our Bill of Rights, to be sure. But what it meant in politics a century later, and still means today, is the freedom to accumulate wealth without social or democratic responsibilities and license to buy the political system right out from everyone else.

Robert A. Heinlein photo

“Such is my thesis, that the licensing of weapons is subversive of liberty and self-defeating in its pious purpose.”

Letter to Alice Dalgliesh, the editor who was censoring his manuscript for Red Planet, regarding gun control registration and control
Grumbles from the Grave (1989)
Context: Criminals are never materially handicapped by such rules; the only effect is to disarm the peaceful citizen and put him fully at the mercy of the lawless. Such rules look very pretty on paper; in practice they are as foolish and footless as the attempt of the mice to bell the cat. Such is my thesis, that the licensing of weapons is subversive of liberty and self-defeating in its pious purpose.

John Wayne Gacy photo

“All the police are going to get me for is running a funeral parlor without a license.”

John Wayne Gacy (1942–1994) American serial killer and torturer

Quoted in Wolcott, Martin Gilman The Evil 100 https://books.google.com/books?id=AqAtjVMGnLIC&pg=PA150&lpg=PA150&dq=john+gacy+funeral+parlor+license&source=bl&ots=koZRMY2U1t&sig=ACfU3U0Xvi5XTOq4hbVXOKgS5ZCkpW977A&hl=en&ppis=_e&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiHzZC_ntfmAhWGKs0KHbNBCQAQ6AEwDXoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=john%20gacy%20funeral%20parlor%20license&f=false Citadel Press 2004 p. 150.

Charles Stross photo
Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay photo
Mary Robinson photo

“We have entered a new reality where fossil fuel companies have lost their legitimacy and social license to operate.”

Mary Robinson (1944) Former President of Ireland and former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

The Elders Chair Mary Robinson Uses UN Press Conference to Denounce President Trump, Canada Free Press, Joseph A. Klein (13 June 2019)

Richard Arkwright photo

“The manufacture of yarn being at length full established, the demand for it became too great for the patentees to supply, and then they sold licenses very extensively, so that at least 60,000 l. has been expended in consequence of such grants. Mr. Arkwright and his partners have expended upwards of 30,000/. in buildings and machinery in Derbyshire, and above 4,000 /. in Manchester; and they have lost not less than 5,000 l. or 6.000 l.”

Richard Arkwright (1732–1792) textile entrepreneur; developer of the cotton mill

by injuries from mobs, and from fire. The saving of labour by this machinery is several hundred thousands per annum, and yet trade is so greatly increased, that many more people are employed, and can earn a comfortable maintenance, than were employed before. The same inventions maybe applied with equal advantage to prepare and spin wool.
The case, 1782

TotalBiscuit photo

“We protected our copyright because TotalBiscuit has no right to make advertising revenues with our license.”

TotalBiscuit (1984–2018) British game commentator

Stephane Woods is lying, and here's why."
Other videos, This video is no longer available: The Day One[:<nowiki>]</nowiki> Garry's Incident Incident

Pope Pius VI photo
Marilyn Ferguson photo
Simon Spurrier photo
Lily Allen photo
Mary Ruwart photo
Ren Zhengfei photo

“We can license technologies and production techniques. Whoever gets the technologies can develop new things based on them.”

Ren Zhengfei (1944) Chinese businessman

Interview with the Economist (September 10, 2019)

“The reason why there are hardly ever completely knock-down arguments, except between very like minded philosophers, is that philosophers, unlike chemists or geologists, are licensed to question everything, including methodology.”

J. J. C. Smart (1920–2012) Australian philosopher and academic

Ockhamist Comments on Strawson, in Anthony Freeman (ed.), Consciousness and its Place in Nature: Does Physicalism Entail Panpsychism?, Exteter, 2006, pp. 158-159
Other quotes

Alfred Noyes photo
James D. Watson photo

“Sure enough, the notion of decoding their personal DNA appealed to more than a few well-off individuals, even if it amounted to the scientific equivalent of purchasing a vanity license plate.”

James D. Watson (1928) American molecular biologist, geneticist, and zoologist.

Source: DNA: The Story of the Genetic Revolution (2003/2017), Chapter 8, “Personal Genetics: The First of the Rest of Us” (p. 205)

Christopher Reeve photo

“If you believe in the slippery slope here, it means that our entire society is perched on the slippery slope. It means that regulation has no value whatsoever, and that is not true.
Now, there are always consequences. We allow 16-year-olds to get driver's licenses, and a lot of them have accidents - but do we rescind the permission to drive a car at 16? No.”

Christopher Reeve (1952–2004) actor, director, producer, screenwriter

Source: "Testimony in favor of funding human cloning experiments" http://www.chrisreevehomepage.com/sp-testimony-bill1758.html [S. 1758 Human Cloning Prohibition Act of 2001] (Senate - March 5, 2002)