Jimmy Wales Quotes

I think that argument is completely morally bankrupt, and I think people know that when they make it. There's a very big difference between having a sincere, passionate interest in a topic and being a paid shill ... Particularly for PR firms, it's something they should really very strongly avoid: ever touching an article.

We have to come together, worldwide, and 'think.' We have a tool - the internet - to let us do that. Let's use it wisely.

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

Almost anything is better than three network TV outlets completely controlling the national discourse with their nightly broadcasts. We've moved a long way from that, and that's important.

To create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language - That's who I am. That's what I am doing. That's my life goal.

Wikipedia is the #5 site on the Web and serves 450 million different people every month - with billions of page views.

People who have achieved a public voice find it a mixed bag.

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

I just get up every day and do what seems like the most interesting, fun thing to do.

I'm not real good at the administrative part of running a company.

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

Dialing down is not an option for me.

We've seen how grassroots journalism by blogs has had an impact at various points politically, as ordinary people have amplified stories that were being ignored by the traditional press.

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

I have always liked the idea of going to print because a big part of what we are about is to disseminate knowledge throughout the world and not just to people who have broadband.

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.

IAR is policy, always has been.

In general, the best advice I can give people is to take criticism seriously, apologize for anything you have done wrong, and pull back from conflict. Of course, if you are right on a content matter, you should press forward in the interest of quality, but conflict often has a way of taking on a life of its own, unfortunately.

A huge amount of what goes on in the Middle East has to do with people being fed really bad information.

I think MySpace is doomed, I give them about two more years ... I think Facebook is the next Microsoft in both the bad and the good senses. That's an amazing company that is going to do a lot of good and bad things.

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.

When you consider the magnitude of how many people use Wikipedia globally, there is a potential here for really creating some noise and getting some attention in the U.S.

There's kind of this real social pressure to not argue about things.

I can't do anything quietly anymore.

Myspace hurts my eyes.

Everybody tells jokes, but we still need comedians.

Massive numbers of people are going to come online from cultures we don't normally interact with.

It has become more important than ever that we teach students how to do research, and how to evaluate different sources of information. (Jimmy Wales, IB World, 68, Sept. 2013, p.10. )

Free speech includes the right to not speak.

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.

I still believe there is a need to open up search and it will come eventually. It is very important to challenge the current models.

I don't come down on any simple place as a deletionist or a completionist.

I have no regular schedule. I get up whenever I can.

Our growth rate continues to be staggering.

Wikis and social networking are just tools.

I'm a very friendly person, and I think that's had a big impact on my work because I tend to be pretty good with not trying to always win every argument and things like that. I just sort of try to bring a lot of people together to talk.

I don't worry. It's just not in my nature, really.

I think it's a mistake to treat different realms of knowledge as if they are some how fundamentally the same.

We are still in the very beginnings of the Internet.

I have zero interest in sports of any kind - professional, college or international.

Wikipedia is a non-profit. It was either the dumbest thing I ever did or the smartest thing I ever did. Communities can build amazing things, but you have to be part of that community and you can't abuse them. You have to be very respectful of what their needs are.

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

I have said this many times in the past and will say it many times in the future I am sure: some people need to find a different hobby ...

We are growing from a cheerful small town where everyone waves off their front porch to the subway of New York City where everyone rushes by. How do you preserve the culture that has worked so well?

Freedom, liberty, individual rights, that idea of dealing with other people in a matter that is not initiating force against them, is critical to me.

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.

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.

What you don't get in the mainstream media is so much of the background material.

While I'm optimistic about the direction the world is headed, generally, I think there is a need for constant vigilance and pressure on repressive governments.

People take issue with individual aspects of Wikipedia all the time. But it's kind of hard to hate the general idea of a free encyclopedia. It's like hating kittens.

I'm on it pretty much all the time. I edit Wikipedia every day, I'm on Facebook, I'm on Twitter, I'm reading the news. During one of the US elections, I actually went through my computer and I blocked myself from looking at the major newspaper sites and Google News because I wasn't getting any work done.

I am really accessible.

My view is that good community management is like having good municipal government: You should be able to have dissenting opinions and so on, freedom of speech, but your grandmother should also be able to walk down the street at night without having to worry about getting mugged.

We don't stoop to the level of our worst critics, no matter how much we may find them to be annoying.

I spent lots of time reading the encyclopedia and really kind of an eclectic approach to learning things - not very structured.

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.

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

We've always had a love/hate relationship with numbers.