Words matter. These are the best Julian Assange Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
In the history of Wikileaks, nobody has claimed that the material being put out is not authentic.
In my role as Wikileaks editor, I’ve been involved in fighting off many legal attacks. To do that, and keep our sources safe, we have had to spread assets, encrypt everything, and move telecommunications and people around the world to activate protective laws in different national jurisdictions.
The media helps keep government honest.
Journalism should be more like science. As far as possible, facts should be verifiable. If journalists want long-term credibility for their profession, they have to go in that direction. Have more respect for readers.
True information does good.
We have to be careful about applying criminal labels to people until we’re very sure.
When it comes to the point where you occasionally look forward to being in prison on the basis that you might be able to spend a day reading a book, the realization dawns that perhaps the situation has become a little more stressful than you would like.
To be alive as a human being is to know, in the same way as it is to have a heart that beats.
These megaleaks… They’re an important phenomenon, and they’re only going to increase.
We always expect tremendous criticism. It is my role to be the lightning rod … to attract the attacks against the organization for our work, and that is a difficult role. On the other hand, I get undue credit.
Cablegate is 3,000 volumes of material. It is the greatest intellectual treasure to have entered into the public record in modern times.
I believe that the way to justice is education.
If journalism is good, it is controversial, by its nature.
By bringing out into the public domain how human institutions actually behave, we can understand frankly, to a degree, for the first time the civilization that we actually have.
All over the world, the barriers between what is inside an organisation and outside an organisation are being smoothed out. In the military, the use of contractors means that what is the military and what is not the military is smoothed out.
So far, we have a perfect record of WikiLeaks having never revealed information that exposed a source over 10 years.
That’s a problem. I mean, like any sort of growing startup organization, we are sort of overwhelmed by our growth. And that means we’re getting enormous quantity of whistleblower disclosures of a very high caliber, but don’t have enough people to actually process and vet this information.
My family has had to move and change their name and have been subject to threats from right wing blogs calling for my son, for example, to be killed to get at me.
During the period of house arrest, I had an electronic manacle around my leg for 24 hours a day, and for someone who has tried to give others liberty all their adult life, that is absolutely intolerable.
I coauthored my first nonfiction book by the time I was 25. I have been involved in nonfiction documentaries, newspapers, TV and internet since that time.
WikiLeaks is designed to make capitalism more free and ethical.
What is the possible benefit? Can this material save lives? Can it improve the quality of life in Iraq? Can it tend to shape our perceptions of how war should and should not be conducted? Can it shape our perceptions of who should be conducting war and in what manner? And the answer to that is a clear yes.
The supply of leaks is very large. It’s helpful for us to have more people in this industry. It’s protective to us.
Every law, every constitution, every regulative decision is based upon what people are discussing in their community. It’s based upon our sum knowledge of history and the present.
It is the role of good journalism to take on powerful abusers, and when powerful abusers are taken on, there’s always a bad reaction. So we see that controversy, and we believe that is a good thing to engage in.
Stopping leaks is a new form of censorship.
I’m not a big fan of regulation: anyone who likes freedom of the press can’t be.
I mean there’s enormous pressures to harmonize freedom of speech legislation and transparency legislation around the world – within the E.U., between China and the United States. Which way is it going to go? It’s hard to see.
To keep a person ignorant is to place them in a cage.
The corruption in reporting starts very early. It’s like the police reporting on the police.
When Enron collapsed, through court processes, thousands and thousands of emails came out that were internal, and it provided a window into how the whole company was managed. It was all the little decisions that supported the flagrant violations.
We have some material on spying by a major government on the tech industry. Industrial espionage.
Wikileaks is a mechanism to maximize the flow of information to maximize the amount of action leading to just reform.
