Quotes from Jimmy Wales

I have always viewed the mission of Wikipedia to be much bigger than just creating a killer website. We're doing that of course, and having a lot of fun doing it, but a big part of what motivates us is our larger mission to affect the world in a positive way.

The core of Wikipedia is something people really believe in. That is too valuable for the world to screw it up.

If it isn't on Google, it doesn't exist.

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.

Mostly, I try to take a rational approach to life.

People are not fundamentally bad. It only takes the smallest of correctives to take care of that tiny minority that wants to disrupt the community.

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.

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

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.

I worry about censorship in many parts of the world.

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

Wikis and social networking are just tools.

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.

Given enough time humans will screw up Wikipedia just as they have screwed up everything else, but so far it's not too bad.

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

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

Love. It isn't very popular in technical circles to say a lot of mushy stuff about love, but frankly it's a very very important part of what holds our project together.

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

People do fun and interesting things because they're fun and interesting.

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

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

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

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

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