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

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.

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.

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

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

The first rule of truly living is to do the things you're most afraid of.

People don't realize that now is all there ever is there is no past or future except as memory or anticipation in your mind.

We were born into an unjust system; we are not prepared to grow old in it.

Why do comparisons of words and tone poems (poetry and music) never take into consideration that the word is a mere signifier, but that the sound, aside from being a signifier, is also an object?

Fermentation equals civilization.

Why is it that the nicest things never are healthy?

I don't think of myself as a rebel; I just say what I think.

Those most moved to tears by every word of a preacher are generally weak and a rascal when the feelings evaporate.

Not everyone who's homeless is a drug-addict or in need of mental health care. Some are normal people who've been knocked down, and it can happen to you, too. Not all of us made bad life choices.

Death may whiten in sun or out of it.