Without strong encryption, you will be spied on systematically by lots of people.

Lots of people working in cryptography have no deep concern with real application issues. They are trying to discover things clever enough to write papers about

I understood the importance in principle of public key cryptography but it's all moved much faster than I expected. I did not expect it to be a mainstay of advanced communications technology

I liked Berkeley tremendously, Berkeley was a very leftist campus. I came to love that city as much as I love Paris or the south of France or New York.

If you have ambition, you might not achieve anything, but without ambition, you are almost certain not to achieve anything.

I have been working on two problems for three years: one of them for 8 or 9 years, and one of them for 3, 4, 5 years.

The secret to strong security: less reliance on secrets.

We in science are spoiled by the success of mathematics. Mathematics is the study of problems so simple that they have good solutions

I have always believed the thesis that one's politics and the character of one's intellectual work are inseparable.

Some people make sharp distinctions sort of between their recreational musings and their professional work. I don't make that distinction very much

One of the things that characterizes good intellectual work is a certain self-importance

Being aware is being aware of one's own mind and the games it plays on itself.

And I withdrew into myself when I understood that they wanted to extract every thought in my head, one by one, like decayed teeth.

How can the creation challenge and control the Creator? Oh mortal man, know that there is an immortal God with an immortal power!

I don't divide the world into the weak and the strong, or the successes and the failures. I divide the world into the learners and nonlearners.

Never underestimate yourself

The job of the leader is to speak to the possibility.

Only what is essential must be said.

No human walking the earth thinks of himself as a bullshitter.

Do not take yourself too seriously. You have to learn not to be dismayed at making mistakes. No human being can avoid failures.

The greatest of all sins is stupidity.