Pulled from Don Hopkins’s weblog:
RMS Essay: Come Celebrate the Joy of Programming, with the World's Most Unbureaucratic Computers.:
I also quickly manifested a lack of proper reverence for authority. The whole center had been denied access to the IBM computer in the building, and we had to use slow telephone connections to the Cambridge Scientific Center. One day an IBM executive came to tell us about the work various IBM scientific centers were doing, and finished with, “Of course you all know the important work being done here.” I asked him, “If our work is so important, why can’t we use the computer in this building any more?” After the meeting, my friends told me they had wanted to say such a thing but were afraid of reprisals! Why? Certainly nothing happened to me as a result. They seem to have learned the habit of cowering before authority even when not actually threatened. How very nice for authority. I decided not to learn this particular lesson.
I think that sums up some things for me, too. Believe what you say, and say what you believe. No-one is better than you because of their clothes, possessions, or position in life—and certainly not because they think they’re better than you.
I see too much of this in students; every student should learn to raise hell, and then learn when it’s best not to. They’ll all go further for it.