Piracy Quotes

“Just because something is traditional is no reason to do it, of course. Piracy, for example, is a tradition that has been carried on for hundreds of years, but that doesn't mean we should all attack ships and steal their gold.”
― Lemony Snicket, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid

“Piracy is our only option.”
― Emma Thompson, The Sense and Sensibility Screenplay and Diaries: Bringing Jane Austen's Novel to Film

“I think piracy is a bit like drinking. You want to stay out all night doing it, you pay the price the next day.”
― Scott Lynch, Red Seas Under Red Skies

“In the immediate nearness of the gold, all else had been forgotten [...], and I could not doubt that he hoped to seize upon the treasure, find and board the Hispanola under cover of night, cut every honest throat about that island, and sail away as he had at first intended, laden with crimes and riches.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island

“Piracy is robbery with violence, often segueing into murder, rape and kidnapping. It is one of the most frightening crimes in the world. Using the same term to describe a twelve-year-old swapping music with friends, even thousands of songs, is evidence of a loss of perspective so astounding that it invites and deserves the derision it receives.”
― Nick Harkaway, The Blind Giant

“my problem isn’t piracy, it’s obscurity”
― Cory Doctorow, Makers

“It was a monumental achievement that the serpentine tc'a had once upon a time gotten the knnn to understand the concept of trade: so nowadays knnn simply contacted a station, rushed onto its methane-dock and deposited whatever they liked, grabbed whatever they wanted and left. This was an improvement over their former behavior, in which they simply looted and left.”
― C.J. Cherryh, The Kif Strike Back

“Even though it is piracy, scanlation has had positive impact.”
― Toni Johnson-Woods, Manga: An Anthology of Global and Cultural Perspectives

“Deep down, people who deliberately distribute other people’s music and stuff feel contempt for professionals. And it’s not just culture — these days lots of people are contemptuous of everything. Without realizing it, they’re searching for things to despise.”
― Fuminori Nakamura, Evil and the Mask

“The snowflake revolution will not be televised - it will be pirated online, go viral and rapidly dissipate in the quicksand of post-millennial conformity.”
― Stewart Stafford

“We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate’s service is more valuable.”
― Gabe Newell

“The last week hadn’t been any better, come to think of it. On Monday they arrived at Gorda, just to find that the cargo of electronics he was to ship to Beowulf had been taken by another freighter for a lower fee. It took him until Wednesday before he found another cargo – which had to reach Earth by Saturday. The last straw was when his crew mutinied a day out of the Hermes system and demanded a pay increase. The union tended to call that sort of thing “collective bargaining”, not actually mutiny, but hey – the results are the same. He tended to favor the term “piracy”, but this wasn’t the high seas and out here, there were real pirates to worry about. His former crew had also wanted more time off and a better cook – at least one who knew how which end of a frying pan to hold. He was unable to comply, and so was forced to stop at Beowulf anyway. That was the last time he saw them. Fortunately for him, Weaver, Fuller and Jang opted to stay with him. Whether it was out of loyalty, or perhaps just convenience, he never knew.”
― Christina Engela, Blachart

“LET US STOP IMITATING!!! Piracy and imitations of designs hamper the development and expansion of export trade. It is regrettable that there are quite a few cases of piracy in the People's Republic. Piracy injures the Chinese people's international prestige, causes the boycott of Chinese goods, and makes Chinese designers lose interest in making creative efforts.”
― Richard Condon, The Manchurian Candidate

“The trouble was, Lily reflected, as she sneaked up the last set of stairs to the girls' dormitory, she didn't want the life of a well-bred Victorian young lady, she wanted the life of an air-pirate.”
― Peter Bunzl, Cogheart

“Stolen ships were the easiest to love.”
― Meg Caddy, Devil's Ballast

“What’s gotten into you?” he wondered, blinking in sudden frustration.
“Not you, that’s for a certainty.”
― Matt Tomerlin, The Devil's Fire

“A very old man once told me a pirate is always chasing after the horizon, fooling himself into believing he can reach it. It might be gold, it might be freedom, it might even be a girl he’s looking to impress. Always it beckons, beautiful and glorious, but no matter how hard a pirate pushes his ship, it remains just out of grasp. The woman who has stolen my cabin, I wager she was Jonathan Griffith’s horizon.”
― Matt Tomerlin, The Devil's Horizon

“No matter,” he assured her. “If it’s a concern, you may take me in your mouth.”
Her smile did not falter. “Anything you put in my mouth will not stop short of my stomach.”
“No doubt,” he boasted.
“You miss my meaning.”
― Matt Tomerlin, The Devil's Horizon

“Thinking ahead was too frightening to consider. Is this what it means to be a pirate? she wondered as her gaze swept over a deck full of them.
But she had never truly been one of them. She was their treasure, not their equal. The meaning of her value differed from captor to captor. Griffith saw a wife. Hornigold saw a map to his fortune. Vane saw a hostage to be exchanged.”
― Matt Tomerlin, The Devil's Horizon

“She mussed her red hair with her fingers and flashed a whimsical grin. “We’ve all heard stories about her. What girl doesn’t want to be Kate Lindsay for a little while?”
― Matt Tomerlin, The Devil's Horizon

“If you are having private thoughts and ask an intimate friend to listen to them in privacy or on a date will that be considered too intimi-dating? And if the thoughts are proved to be untrue, but your friend still insists on believing in them anyway, would that be considered a cons-piracy?”
― Ana Claudia Antunes, One Hundred One World Accounts in One Hundred One Word Count

“In the course of crime ... the descent is rapid.”
― Frederick Marryat, The Pirate

“Promotion and Popularity through Piracy are now main stream. May be, it is time for content owners to have a piracy plan for a part of their content to gain visibility and popularity before capitalizing on the rest”
― Kalyan C. Kankanala, Fun IP, Fundamentals of Intellectual Property

“Kill Piracy; Save Creativity”
― Kalyan C. Kankanala, Fun IP, Fundamentals of Intellectual Property

“There is a Pirate in every one of us”
― Kalyan C. Kankanala, Fun IP, Fundamentals of Intellectual Property

“It's nice to think my ideas can still entertain and challenge people after I'm gone, but I would like the royalties for them while I'm alive.”
― Stewart Stafford

“Far from being misanthropic loners with anger issues, most of these pirates had lives that were intimately intertwined with the communities from which they came, and to which they one day hoped to return to enjoy their spoils. They viewed piracy as a job, not a lifestyle.”
― Eric Jay Dolin, Black Flags, Blue Waters: The Epic History of America's Most Notorious Pirates

“The Pirate Code by Stewart Stafford

Highwaymen of the high seas,
Outlaws of the oceans deep,
Plundering the crown's gold,
They may hang us as we sleep.

Home is but a distant memory,
Friends are anyone we can find,
Turncoats walk the plank slowly,
Or are keelhauled with jellyfish in brine.

The Robin Hoods of seaweed spray,
We rob the rich to give to ourselves,
Growing fat on finest grog and food,
And make pieces of eight into twelve.

© Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“The Uskoks – like reformed alcoholics brought face to face with row upon row of brightly coloured liqueur miniatures – were simply unable to avoid helping themselves to passing Venetian Christian ships.”
― Simon Winder, Danubia: A Personal History of Habsburg Europe

“It was the genius of Orseolo to fully understand that Venice's growth, perhaps its very survival, lay far beyond the waters of the lagoon. He had already obtained favorable trading agreements with Constantinople, and, to the disgust of militant Christendom, he dispatched ambassadors to the four corners of the Mediterranean to strike similar agreements with the Islamic world. The future for Venice lay in Alexandria, Syria, Constantinople, and the Barbary Coast of North Africa, where wealthier, more advanced societies promised spices, silk, cotton, and glass — luxurious commodities that the city was ideally placed to sell on into northern Italy and central Europe. The problem for Venetian sailors was that the voyage down the Adriatic was terribly unsafe. The city's home waters, the Gulf of Venice, lay within its power, but the central Adriatic was risky to navigate, as it was patrolled by Croat pirates. Since the eighth century these Slav settlers from the upper Balkans had established themselves on its eastern, Dalmatian shores. This was a terrain made for maritime robbery. From island lairs and coastal creeks, the shallow-draft Croat ships could dart out and snatch merchant traffic passing down the strait. Venice had been conducting a running fight with these pirates for 150 years. The contest had yielded little but defeat and humiliation. One doge had been killed leading a punitive expedition; thereafter the Venetians had opted to pay craven tribute for free passage to the open seas. The Croats were now seeking to extend their influence to the old Roman towns farther up the coast. Orseolo brought to this problem a clear strategic vision that would form the cornerstone of Venetian policy for all the centuries that the Republic lived. The Adriatic must provide free passage for Venetian ships, otherwise they would be forever bottled up. The doge ordered that there would be no more tribute and prepared a substantial fleet to command obedience.”
― Roger Crowley, City of Fortune: How Venice Won and Lost a Naval Empire