Sourced

• We are growing from a cheerful small town where everyone waves off their front porch to the subway of New York City where everyone rushes by. How do you preserve the culture that has worked so well?

• We help the internet not suck.
  • On C-Span (25 September 2005)

• It's a very simple and pure goal. It's something that's good for the world. We're still not there by a long shot.
  • Comment to the Birmingham News, "Alabamian is brain behind Wikipedia"

• "It's been an ongoing process of figuring out how the social model actually should work, how can you control the site to generate quality," Wales said. "It's an ongoing series of modifications."
  • Comment to the Birmingham News, "Alabamian is brain behind Wikipedia"

• It's very exciting to all of us. I travel all over the world. I think that worries my mom some, (but) it's nice.
  • Comment to the Birmingham News, "Alabamian is brain behind Wikipedia"

• It is pretty weird. A few years ago, I was just some guy sitting in front of the internet. Now I send an e-mail or edit an article and it makes headlines around the world ... I used to be just a guy – now I'm Jimmy Wales.
  • "Identity question for world's encyclopaedia", The Times

• Like the great artists Jerry Lewis and David Hasselhoff. I'm only appreciated overseas.

Unsourced

1. LAMB: Another thing I read about you is that you are a follower or have been at some point a follower of Ayn Rand?
2. WALES: That‘s right, yes.
3. LAMB: Who was she and do you still follow her and what is it about it that you like?
4. WALES: Yes. So Ayn Rand is the – she wrote "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead," as is viewed by many as, you know, something of the founder of the libertarian strain of thought in the U.S. She would have rejected quite rightly, I think, the libertarian label. But I think for me one of the core things that is very applicable to my life today is the virtue of independence – is the vision, you know, if you know the idea of Howard Roark who is the architect in "The Fountainhead" who has a vision for what he wants to accomplish and, you know, there‘s some time in the book when he is frustrated in his career because people don‘t want to build the type of buildings he wants to build. And he‘s given a choice, a difficult choice, to compromise his integrity or to essentially go out of business. And he has to go and take a job working in a quarry. And for me that model has a lot of – a lot of resonance for me. You know when I think about what I‘m doing – what I‘m doing and the way I‘m doing it is more important to me than any amount of money or anything like that because it‘s my artistic work.
5. LAMB: What year did you read "Atlas Shrugged" or "Fountainhead?"
6. WALES: I guess I was around 20 when I – when I read "The Fountainhead."

On Wikipedia

• "We are Wikipedians. This means that we should be: kind, thoughtful, passionate about getting it right, open, tolerant of different viewpoints, open to criticism, bold about changing our policies and also cautious about changing our policies. We are not vindictive, childish, and we don't stoop to the level of our worst critics, no matter how much we may find them to be annoying.--Jimbo Wales 15:39, 18 December 2005 (UTC)"

• [Wikipedia is] like a sausage: you might like the taste of it, but you don't necessarily want to see how it's made.  

Attributed

• Jimbo Wales: who is babel?
  Angela: I don't know. "Google:babel free translators events" brings up Wikipedia as the first hit :)
  Jimbo Wales: damn wikipedia spam
  Jimbo Wales: those people are taking over the internet

• And so, we don't need a business model, we're just doing it. ~ 200?

• Frankly, and let me be blunt, Wikipedia as a readable product is not for us. It's for them. It's for that girl in Africa who can save the lives of hundreds of thousands of people around her, but only if she's empowered with the knowledge to do so. ( 23 Oct 2005)

• I would view them as a competitor, except that I think they will be crushed out of existence within 5 years.
  • When asked about encyclopedias like World Book and Encyclopædia Britannica.

• Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing. (July 2004)

• • Response to what Wikimedia would do in the hypothetical situation that Answers.com tried to exert control over Wikipedia's content. (24 Oct 2005)