John McAfee Quotes

All of life is relationship. We relate to people, things, and ideas, and our actions reflect the tone and substance of each relationship. How we relate to money, to the ideal of love, to nature, to our concept of death, and to our spouse reveals, in the moment, the truth of ourselves.

Do you think the Chinese think twice about hiring a hacker with a mohawk or a tattooed face? No.

Really, what the government is asking Apple to do is to make every individual who uses an iPhone susceptible to hacking by bad people, foreign governments, and anyone who wants.

I have dual citizenship; I would be happy to go to England. I would be very happy to go to America.

I think that the world has largely ignored Belize and the political situation and the plight of its people because it's one of the smallest countries and, in terms of the world economy, one of the least significant.

I was one of the first practitioners of social engineering as a hacking technique, and today it is my only tool of use, aside from a smartphone - in a purely white hat sort of way. But if you don't trust me, then ask any reasonably competent social engineer.

Any idiot can make money. Keeping money, very few can do.

History is sympathetic to its authors.

Hackers rarely have full knowledge of the technology stack of a target.

Let me tell you what the truth is ... I have learned one thing in life: there is no such thing as bad press. There is not. That's a fundamental truth. The more bad things said about you, the more power they give to you.

Jealousy, greed, fear. We're all full of these things. But also love and compassion. If you saw a drowning baby, it wouldn't matter if you were wearing a tuxedo on the way to your own wedding. You'd jump in to save him.

If the majority holds some thing of value, you can be certain it has none.

The government generally is just too top-heavy.

Ignorance and confidence are constant companions

When you're standing in line at the airport, and your shoes are off, your belt is off, and your personal belongings are being closely scrutinized, and you're standing with your hands in the air, waiting to be patted down, do you feel protected? I don't. I feel like I'm the enemy.

We are losing privacy at an alarming rate - we have none left.

I think the thing that our government lacks - just about more than anything else - is technological competence. We have some of the greatest white-hat hackers in the world here in the U.S., but the government seems to be technologically illiterate.

Success, for me, is being able to wake up in the morning and feel like a 12 year old.

I, perhaps wrongly, assume that people actually read articles that interest them rather than just headlines.

I think that it's when we step out of the road, step outside the box, become our own person, and we walk fearlessly down paths other people wouldn't look at, that true progress comes. And sometimes true beauty as well.

Politicon should be applauded for recognizing the increasing impact of technology, not only on American social and economic systems but on the very structure of our system of politics.

We as Americans have ripped off the world. We get to throw food away. It's insane.

We are at war - undeclared and of such a subtle nature that few have noticed - but war nevertheless. It is a cyberwar on many fronts, in which it is difficult to identify who is friend and who is foe. I will predict now, as unintelligible as it may seem, that Anonymous will turn out to be more friend than foe.

There are no secrets.

I am not in any way a conspiracy theorist and have no time for such nonsense.

There is dissatisfaction in all of us. Some of us take out that dissatisfaction by attempting to ruin whatever you are attempting to do. This is a fact of life.

Corporate competition is fierce, viewed by many as economic warfare where all is fair. But politics ... now, this is something unique.

True love has no object. It is a state of being.

If operating in a network environment, do not place public domain or shareware programs in a common file-server directory that could be accessible to any other PC on the network.

We are aware of yoga only as a technique to gain physical strength, flexibility, or increased health. And indeed these are potent side effects of the practice. But that is what they are: side effects. To focus on these largely insignificant manifestations is to miss the point entirely.

When we do not understand something, a common reaction is to fear it. In government, this is the usual, and encouraged, reaction. The reaction to the gig economy has been no different, and this growing fear has unfortunately turned into a legislative bloodbath.

Security is a human problem.

You'll see a movie about someone you hate or someone you love. Will you see a movie about grandma making apple pies? No, you won't. Only if grandma has poisoned the neighbor or is suspected of poisoning the neighbor through her apple pies.

There are always losers when society evolves. In the free market, these losers are expected and encouraged to retrain and find new ways to survive and thrive.

My fragile connection with the world of polite society has, without a doubt, been severed.

A hacker is someone who uses a combination of high-tech cybertools and social engineering to gain illicit access to someone else's data.

I'm a paranoid person. I really am.

Governments sometimes turn paranoid. And they fear things. And sometimes the thing they fear the most is the populace.

I am looking at opening a school of social engineering. The McAfee School of Social Engineering has a nice ring to it. Beyond that, it is hard to say what life will bring my way.

Our mobile phones have become the greatest spy on the planet.

Liability is being assessed against companies who inadvertently have shipped a virus to another company. Rather than risk the incredibly bad PR, these companies fork over.

Steve Jobs would have wanted his words to change not just technology but politics itself.

It's very hard to keep an uncrackable encryption if you share it with the government.

I would describe myself as quite sane and lucid, which is why I'm still alive.

Governments are composed of human beings, and all of the frailties that humans possess are absorbed into these governments and become active within these governments. Hatred, anger, jealousy, fear, greed, distrust and the whole host of afflictions that humans must bear, lurk just beneath the surface of civility displayed by 'government.'

Corporations understand the value of security because the leakage of their competitive information could be the end of the corporation.

Belize is not ready for self-government.

Is Snowden a good man or a bad man? I have no clue and even less interest.

There is no hope for my life if I am ever returned to Belize.

I have started many companies now worth more than $100 million. So I know a little about business.

Private communication systems have been around since the beginning of human culture.

There's not a single flashlight app that's not spying on you right now.

Every newspaper on earth has called me a liar.

Making money is easy. It is. The difficult thing in life is not making it, it's keeping it.

Marketing is the obverse of programming.

The government can spy on people using their mobile phones while they're with their wives and husbands.

Belize is still a pirate haven and is run more or less along the lines established centuries ago by the likes of Captain Morgan, Blackbeard, and Captain Barrow.

When a hacker gains access to any corporate data, the value of that data depends on which server, or sometimes a single person's computer, that the hacker gains access to.

My most heartfelt thank you goes to Impact Future Media and Cartoon Monkey Studio. Their dedication to the truth is very uncommon in the world we live in today. I am now, and will always be, grateful to their organizations.

You can't stop things like Bitcoin. [ ... ]. It's like trying to stop gunpowder.

The most promising privacy thing is stupid phones. I'm dumping all my smart phones.

I don't know much about technology anymore.

Software production is like any other production the preceded it, no raw materials are required, no time is required and no effort is required, you can make a million Copies of Software instantaneously for free and its very unique about that.

I would like to point to the extraordinary lengths the mainstream media will go to maintain a sensationalist story.

The Deep Web contains shockingly valuable information. Can you imagine how cancer research would blossom if every researcher had instant access to every research paper done by every single university and research lab in the world?

I don't need friends.

Everyone knows that a federal job is a lifetime job, and for many in Congress, it seems they have a lifetime job, too.

A simple social engineering hack might involve leaving a thumb drive on the pavement close to the driver's door of a car.

We don't even know our friends' phone numbers anymore.

I'm the founder of the McAfee Anti-Virus Software Company. Although I have had nothing to do with this company for over 15 years, I still get volumes of mail asking 'how do I uninstall this software'. I have no idea.

Libertarian principles are very simple, but you can't violate any of them and still call yourself Libertarian.

In this age of communications that span both distance and time, the only tool we have that approximates a 'whisper' is encryption. When I cannot whisper in my wife's ear or the ears of my business partners, and have to communicate electronically, then encryption is our tool to keep our secrets secret.

Every corporation worth its salt is throwing money at Deep Web research, not least Google. The company that unlocks the mysteries of the Deep Web will obtain power of an enormous magnitude.

I had more money than I could spend in million lifetimes.

I cannot conceive of how more than 1% of us could possibly survive a cyberwar.

I'm an entrepreneur. I always have been. I am curious, and I enjoy solving problems.

The world chooses to think what the world thinks.

I simply would like to live comfortably day by day, fish, swim, enjoy my declining years.

I trust and use RakEM for my private messages and calls. Other messengers collected metadata about who I messaged, when and where - RakEM does not collect metadata, encrypts local files, and uses the strongest end-to-end encryption around.

I am always interested in helping and growing new tech start-ups and ideas.

As the economy goes south, petty theft begins. And then grand theft. And then muggings.

I know many people within Anonymous; I was the keynote speaker at Defcon in Las Vegas and got a standing ovation.

Donald Trump is proud of the fact that he's never written an e-mail.

I would be very happy to go to America. America is where I was raised and that's exactly what I want.