Top 35 Tim Berners-Lee Quotes

The Semantic Web is not a separate Web but an extension of the current one, in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation.

Celebrity damages private life.

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.

The people who designed the tools that make the Net run had their own ideas for the future.

The Web as I envisaged it, we have not seen it yet. The future is still so much bigger than the past.

Any enterprise CEO really ought to be able to ask a question that involves connecting data across the organization, be able to run a company effectively, and especially to be able to respond to unexpected events. Most organizations are missing this ability to connect all the data together.

I basically wrote the code and the specs and documentation for how the client and server talked to each other.

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.

Any good software engineer will tell you that a compiler and an interpreter are interchangeable.

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

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.

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.

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

Most larger companies now see that for the market to grow, Web infrastructure must be royalty-free.

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

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

I myself feel that it is very important that my ISP supplies internet to my house like the water company supplies water to my house. It supplies connectivity with no strings attached.

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

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.

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

Imagine that everything you are typing is being read by the person you are applying to for your first job. Imagine that it’s all going to be seen by your parents and your grandparents and your grandchildren as well.

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

I don’t know whether machine translation will eventually get good enough to allow us to browse people’s websites in different languages so you can see how they live in different countries.

Web users ultimately want to get at data quickly and easily. They don’t care as much about attractive sites and pretty design.

Things can change so fast on the internet.

I hope we will use the Net to cross barriers and connect cultures.

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.

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.

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

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

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

In many ways, people growing up with the Web and now the Semantic Web take the power at their fingertips for granted.

You affect the world by what you browse.

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

I don’t mind being, in the public context, referred to as the inventor of the World Wide Web. What I like is that image to be separate from private life, because celebrity damages private life.