Edward Snowden
52 quotes
Biography
"Some hentai games are very good. While wanton sexuality, ironically enough, seems to turn most people off, in some (admittedly rare) cases it can actually deepen your attachment to a character and really make you appreciate a plot that much more. There are hentai games that are funny as hell, emotionally touching (even through a language barrier), and there are also games that are just straight up twisted."
"You can't come up against the world's most powerful intelligence agencies and not accept the risk. If they want to get you, over time they will."
"I did not reveal any US operations against legitimate military targets. I pointed out where the NSA has hacked civilian infrastructure such as universities, hospitals, and private businesses because it is dangerous."
"All I can say right now is the US Government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me. Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped."
"If I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn't I have flown directly into Beijing? I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now."
"Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American"
"This country is worth dying for."
"Seeing someone in the position of James Clapper - the Director of National Intelligence - baldly lying to the public without repercussion is the evidence of a subverted democracy. The consent of the governed is not consent if it is not informed."
"Unfortunately, the mainstream media now seems far more interested in what I said when I was 17 or what my girlfriend looks like rather than, say, the largest program of suspicionless surveillance in human history."
"Bathtub falls and police officers kill more Americans than terrorism, yet we've been asked to sacrifice our most sacred rights for fear of falling victim to it."
"I don't want to live in a world where everything that I say, everything I do, everyone I talk to, every expression of creativity or love or friendship is recorded."
"The government and intelligence services of the United States of America have attempted to make an example of me, a warning to all others who might speak out as I have. I have been made stateless and hounded for my act of political expression."
"No system of mass surveillance has existed in any society that we know of to this point that has not been abused."
"There have been times throughout American history where what is right is not the same as what is legal. Sometimes to do the right thing you have to break the law."
"It is we who infuse life with meaning through our actions and the stories we create with them."
"And history also shows that seemingly ordinary people who are sufficiently resolute about justice can triumph over the most formidable adversaries."
"Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say."
"The NSA has the greatest surveillance capabilities that we've ever seen in history. Now, what they will argue, is that they don't use this for nefarious purposes against American citizens. In some ways, that's true but the real problem is that they're using these capabilities to make us vulnerable to them and then saying, 'well I have a gun pointed at your head. I'm not going to pull the trigger. Trust me.'"
"Abandoning open society for fear of terrorism is the only way to be defeated by it."
"Privacy is the right to a free mind."
"Saying that you don’t care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about freedom of speech because you have nothing to say. It’s a deeply anti social principle because rights are not just individual, they’re collective, and what may not have value to you today may have value to an entire population, an entire people, an entire way of life tomorrow. And if you don’t stand up for it, then who will?"
"I never imagined that I would live to see our courts condemn the NSA’s activities as unlawful and in the same ruling credit me for exposing them."
"When I came forward in 2013, I said the reason that I came forward was that we have a right to know that which is done to us and that which is done in our name by our governments. That was already under threat. And when you look at the world since, it seems that that trend is accelerating. Do we still have that right? Do we have any rights if we don’t defend them? Well, today we see someone who has stood up to defend that right, who has aggressively championed that right, at an extreme cost. And it’s time for us to defend his rights."
"I think I have just read about the man for which I have waited. Earmarks of a real hero."
"He's obviously violated the laws of America, for which he's responsible, but I think the invasion of human rights and American privacy has gone too far ... I think that the secrecy that has been surrounding this invasion of privacy has been excessive, so I think that the bringing of it to the public notice has probably been, in the long term, beneficial."