Explore Quotes by Bruce Schneier

There's an entire flight simulator hidden in every copy of Microsoft Excel 97.

Despite fearful rhetoric to the contrary, terrorism is not a transcendent threat. A terrorist attack cannot possibly destroy our country's way of life; it's only our reaction to that attack that can do that kind of damage.

Think of your existing power as the exponent in an equation that determines the value of information. The more power you have, the more additional power you derive from the new data.

When a big company lays you off, they often give you a year's salary to 'go pursue a dream.' If you're stupid, you panic and get another job. If you're smart, you take the money and use the time to figure out what you want to do next.

You can't defend. You can't prevent. The only thing you can do is detect and respond.

Air travel survived decades of terrorism, including attacks which resulted in the deaths of everyone on the plane. It survived 9/11. It'll survive the next successful attack. The only real worry is that we'll scare ourselves into making air travel so onerous that we won't fly anymore.

It's frustrating; terrorism is rare and largely ineffectual, yet we regularly magnify the effects of both their successes and failures by terrorizing ourselves.

When people are scared, they need something done that will make them feel safe, even if it doesn't truly make them safer. Politicians naturally want to do something in response to crisis, even if that something doesn't make any sense. But unfortunately for politicians, the security measures that work are largely invisible.

Microsoft knows that reliable software is not cost effective. According to studies, 90% to 95% of all bugs are harmless. They're never discovered by users, and they don't affect performance. It's much cheaper to release buggy software and fix the 5% to 10% of bugs people find and complain about.

When my mother gets a prompt 'Do you want to download this?' she's going to say yes. It's disingenuous for Microsoft to give you all of these tools with which to hang yourself, and when you do, then say it's your fault.

Don't make the mistake of thinking you're Facebook's customer, you're not - you're the product.

Buy American Doesn’t Sell Well Anymore Because It Means Give A Copy To The NSA

Digital files cannot be made uncopyable, any more than water can be made not wet.

No one can duplicate the confidence that RSA offers after 20 years of cryptanalytic review.

This is not the internet the world needs, or the internet its creators envisioned. We need to take it back. And by we, I mean the engineering community.

Something that looks like a protocol but does not accomplish a task is not a protocol—it’s a waste of time.

More people are killed every year by pigs than by sharks, which shows you how good we are at evaluating risk.

Chaos is hard to create, even on the Internet. Here's an example. Go to Amazon.com. Buy a book without using SSL. Watch the total lack of chaos.

Terrorism isn't a crime against people or property. It's a crime against our minds, using the death of innocents and destruction of property to make us fearful. Terrorists use the media to magnify their actions and further spread fear. And when we react out of fear, when we change our policy to make our country less open, the terrorists succeed -- even if their attacks fail. But when we refuse to be terrorized, when we're indomitable in the face of terror, the terrorists fail -- even if their attacks succeed.

Terrorists can only take my life. Only my government can take my freedom.

There are two types of encryption: one that will prevent your sister from reading your diary and one that will prevent your government.