Tim Berners-Lee Quotes

What was often difficult for people to understand about the design was that there was nothing else beyond URLs, HTTP and HTML. There was no central computer "controlling" the Web, no single network on which these protocols worked, not even organisation anywhere that "ran" the Web. The Web was not a physical "thing" that existed in a certain "place". It was a "space" in which information could exist.

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.

I suppose it's amazing when you think how many things people get involved in that don't work.

I have built a moat around myself, along with ways over that moat so that people can ask questions.

You affect the world by what you browse.

A hacker to me is someone creative who does wonderful things.

I'm very aware there are lots of other people who are just bright and working just as hard, with just the same dedication to make the world a good place.

The goal of the Web is to serve humanity. We build it now so that those who come to it later will be able to create things that we cannot ourselves imagine.

Data is a precious thing and will last longer than the systems themselves.

As more and more people awaken to the threats against our basic rights online, we must start a debate - everywhere - about the web we want.

Now, if someone tries to monopolize the Web, for example pushes proprietary variations on network protocols, then that would make me unhappy.

The ultimate goal of the Web is to support and improve our web-like existence in the world . We clump into family , association, and companies.

It was really hard explaining the Web before people just got used to it because they didn't even have words like click and jump and page.

[With AI] Somebody's going to have to think of a completely new algorithm, a new way of doing goal-based planning.

Cool URIs don't change

What is a Web year now, about three months? And when people can browse around, discover new things, and download them fast, when we all have agents - then Web years could slip by before human beings can notice.

It is the the duty of a Webmaster to allocate URIs which you will be able to stand by in 2 years, in 20 years, in 200 years.

One of the things I like about the computer that I use is that I can write a program on it or I can download a program on to it and run it. That's kind of important to me, and that's also kind of important to the whole future of the internet ... obviously a closed platform is a serious brake on innovation.

We need to look at the whole society and think, "Are we actually thinking about what we're doing as we go forward, and are we preserving the really important values that we have in society? Are we keeping it democratic, and open, and so on?"

The Web does not just connect machines, it connects people.

People keep asking me what I think of it now that it's done. Hence my protest: The Web is not done!

Most of systems still depended on some central node to which everything had to be connected [ ... ]. I wanted the act of adding a link to be trivial. If i was, then a web of links could spread evenly across the globe.

I don't believe in the sort of "Eureka!" moment idea. I think it's a myth. I'm very suspicious that actually Archimedes had been thinking about that problem for a long time.

It's time to recognise the Internet as a basic human right, that means guaranteeing affordable access for all, ensuring Internet packets are delivered without commercial or political discrimination, and protecting the privacy and freedom of Web users regardless of where they live.

Everybody who runs a Web site knows we're not assured of compatibility, and we could end up with a split.

The internet explodes when somebody has the creativity to look at a piece of data that's put there for one reason and realise they can connect it with something else.

In '93 to '94, every browser had its own flavor of HTML. So it was very difficult to know what you could put in a Web page and reliably have most of your readership see it.

What's very important from my point of view is that there is one web ... Anyone that tries to chop it into two will find that their piece looks very boring.

Physicists analyze systems. Web scientists, however, can create the systems.

We should work toward a universal linked information system, in which generality and portability are more important than fancy graphics techniques and complex extra facilities.

I think a lot of great software has been written by people who are scratching a short-term itch, something which has been niggling them for ages, but in the back of their mind they've got a wonderful long-term plan.

It's difficult to imagine the power that you're going to have when so many different sorts of data are available.

Customers need to be given control of their own data-not being tied into a certain manufacturer so that when there are problems they are always obliged to go back to them.

I found myself answering the same questions asked frequently of me by different people. It would be so much easier if everyone could just read my database.

When you understand things, there's no more magic,

When it comes to professionalism, it makes sense to talk about being professional in IT. Standards are vital so that IT professionals can provide systems that last.

The challenge is to manage the Web in an open way-not too much bureaucracy, not subject to political or commercial pressures. The U.S. should demonstrate that it is prepared to share control with the world.

Anyone who has lost track of time when using a computer knows the propensity to dream, the urge to make dreams come true and the tendency to miss lunch.

The dream behind the Web is of a common information space in which we communicate by sharing information.

If I had taken a proprietary control of the Web, then it would never have taken off. People only committed their time to it because they knew it was open, shared: that they could help decide what would happen to it next.. and I wouldn't be raking off 10%!

Universality has been the key enabler of innovation on the Web and will continue to be so in the future.

The most important thing that was new was the idea of URI-or URL, that any piece of information anywhere should have an identifier, which will allow you to get hold of it.

We shouldn't build a technology to colour, or grey out, what people say. The media in general is balanced, although there are a lot of issues to be addressed that the media rightly pick up on.

Freedom of connection with any application to any party is the fundamental social basis of the internet. And now, is the basis of the society built on the internet.

The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect,

It's interesting that people throughout the existence of the web have been concerned about monopolies.

Web applications will become more and more ubiquitous throughout our human environment, with walls, automobile dashboards, refrigerator doors all serving as displays giving us a window onto the Web.

It's the whole cat and mouse game between the readers and writers that makes the web work.

The Web took off in all its glory because it was a royalty-free infrastructure ... 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 to end in the U.S.A. If we had a situation in which the U.S. had serious flaws in its Net Neutrality, and Europe did have Net Neutrality, and I were trying to start a company, then I would be very tempted to move.

We can't blame the technology when we make mistakes.

Acceptance is the spiritual hammock.

My own personal preference is that the consumer, the individual person should be protected because individual people and the difference between individual people and the diversity we have between people on the planet is so important.

When something is such a creative medium as the web, the limits to it are our imagination.

The Web is now philosophical engineering. Physics and the Web are both about the relationship between the small and the large.

WorldWideWeb: Proposal for a HyperText Project

I would have to create a system with common rules that would be acceptable to everyone. That meant as close as possible to no rules at all.

When you go onto the internet, if you really rummage around randomly then how do you hope to find something of any of value?

The world's urban poor and the illiterate are going to be increasingly disadvantaged and are in danger of being left behind. The web has added a new dimension to the gap between the first world and the developing world. We have to start talking about a human right to connect.

I'm an optimist about humanity in general, I suppose.

We could say we want the Web to reflect a vision of the world where everything is done democratically. To do that, we get computers to talk with each other in such a way as to promote that ideal.

Sites need to be able to interact in one single, universal space.

To be a hacker - when I use the term - is somebody who is creative and does wonderful things.

On the web the thinking of cults can spread very rapidly and suddenly a cult which was 12 people who had some deep personal issues suddenly find a formula which is very believable.

I think IT projects are about supporting social systems - about communications between people and machines. They tend to fail due to cultural issues.

In an extreme view, the world can be seen as only connections, nothing else. We think of a dictionary as the repository of meaning, but it defines words only in terms of other words. I liked the idea that a piece of information is really defined only by what it's related to, and how it's related. There really is little else to meaning. The structure is everything. There are billions of neurons in our brains, but what are neurons? Just cells. The brain has no knowledge until connections are made between neurons. All that we know, all that we are, comes from the way our neurons are connected.

Whatever the device you use for getting your information out, it should be the same information.

What we believe, endorse, agree with, and depend on is representable and, increasingly, represented on the Web. We all have to ensure that the society we build with the Web is the sort we intend.

I think when you have a lot of jumbled up ideas they come together slowly over a period of several years.

Web pages are designed for people. For the Semantic Web, we need to look at existing databases.

Legend has it that every new technology is first used for something related to sex or pornography. That seems to be the way of humankind.

IT professionals have a responsibility to understand the use of standards and the importance of making Web applications that work with any kind of device.

If you are not on the web, you will have problems accessing services.

One of the issues of social networking silos is that they have the data and I don't.

When somebody has learned how to program a computer ... You're joining a group of people who can do incredible things. They can make the computer do anything they can imagine.

Innovation is serendipity, so you don't know what people will make.

If you use the original World Wide Web program, you never see a URL or have to deal with HTML. That was a surprise to me - that people were prepared to painstakingly write HTML.

It's possible to live without the Web. It's not possible to live without water. But if you've got water, then the difference between somebody who is connected to the Web and is part of the information society, and someone who (is not) is growing bigger and bigger.

That idea of URL was the basic clue to the universality of the Web. That was the only thing I insisted upon.

If different cultures connect with each other, they are less likely to want to shoot each other.