Glenn Greenwald Quotes

The same president who has insisted that core moralism drives him has brought America to its lowest moral standing in history.

The hallmark of an authoritarian idiot is yelling TERRORIST-LOVER! at anyone questioning the definition of Terrorist.

Democracy requires accountability and consent of the governed, which is only possible if citizens know what is being done in their name.

And in every instance, the motive is the same: suppressing dissent and mandating compliance.

I have nothing but the highest regard for 'Salon' and its commitment to independent and provocative journalism.

I'd like to vote for the candidate similar to the one the Right absurdly claims Obama is.

I don't have a 'side' - I'm responsible for what I say and nothing else.

It's hardly news that the Obama administration is intensely and, in many respects, unprecedentedly hostile toward the news-gathering process.

As always, imagine how great the press corps would be if it devoted 1/1000th the energy to dissecting non-sex political wrongdoing

To the extent that you have aided and abetted Snowden, even in his current movements, why shouldn't you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime?

It's common to go from 'crashing the gate' to guarding it.

The bottom layer of the right-wing noise machine.

Your personal life is now known as Facebook's data. Its CEO's personal life is now known as mind your own business.

In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution." After

Terrorist', noun: 1. Someone my government tells me is a terrorist; 2. Someone my President decides to kill.

When journalists are 'accused' of being 'advocates', that means: challenging and deviating from DC orthodoxies.

I absolutely believe that another 9/11 is possible.

The purpose of whistleblowing is to expose secret and wrongful acts by those in power in order to enable reform.

Promoting the human capacity to reason and make decisions: that is the purpose of whistle-blowing, of activism, of political journalism.

My nature is that when I see abuses of power, I want to expose those abuses.

The Obama administration says we only destroy the privacy of non-Americans. That is not true. The government is spying on Americans.

A number I'd love to know: the % of those now saying 'we have to vote Obama to stop an attack on Iran' who will support one if Obama does it.

Time magazine's Jay Carney and Richard Stengel are now in government while Obama aides David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs are commentators on MSNBC.

The email began: The security of people's communications is very important to me,

Was a full-throated harangue, a typical performance when American officials speak about a regime not aligned with the United States.

If establishment journalists were to replicate actual stenography, it would be an improvement on most of the work they produce.

Government and businesses cannot function without enormous amounts of data, and many people have to have access to that data.

American political culture quickly and always outpaces any attempt to satirize it.

The government usually announces it killed a Big Terrorist 5 or 6 different times before they're dead - they're almost like cats.

Courage is contagious.

It's so much easier to debate people when you can pretend that they hold moronic position that they don't actually believe.

I have been to the darkest corners of government, and what they fear is light.

I know it's a really hard concept to process, but the fact that Govt accuses someone of being a Terrorist doesn't mean they are.

In video games, one of the most helpless against injustice can even mighty.

The key question: will the NSA continue to monitor hundreds of millions of people without any suspicion? Under Obama's proposals: Yes.

Fearlessness can be its own form of power.

Only In America can a renowned and devoted terrorism supporter like Peter King be the arbiter of national security and treason.

My inbox is the enemy.

History shows that the mere existence of a mass surveillance apparatus, regardless of how it is used, is in itself sufficient to stifle dissent.

Beyond all the other reasons not to do it, free speech assaults always backfire: they transform bigots into martyrs.

They're called 'facts', and my role is to amplify those, not cheerlead. And I don't care at all what you think of my motives.

The free press guarantee does not only protect corporate reporters but anyone engaged in journalism, whether employed or not.

In the face of severe injustice, a refusal to dissent is the sign of a character flaw or moral failure.

Edward Snowden: The Whistleblower Behind the NSA Surveillance Revelations

I do not want to live in a world where we have no privacy and no freedom, where the unique value of the Internet is snuffed out,

Encryption matters, and it is not just for spies and philanderers.

Terrorism': the word that means nothing, yet justifies everything.

You can't have a pristine house with ten dogs, and I'd rather have the ten dogs.

Let us speak no more of faith in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of cryptography.

Incestuous, homogeneous fiefdoms of self-proclaimed expertise are always rank-closing and mutually self-defending, above all else.

The more fear confrontational activism can put into the heart of the political class, the better.

Transparency is for those who carry out public duties and exercise public power. Privacy is for everyone else.

For those suggesting criticisms of drone kills should wait until the election: that'd be reasonable if he stops killing until the election.

The ultimate test of a society's freedom is not how it treats its good, obedient, compliant citizens; it's how it treats its dissidents.

He's the President - it's the responsibility of every citizen to criticize aggressively when they think it's warranted.

But the true measure of a society's freedom is how it treats its dissidents and other marginalized groups, not how it treats good loyalists.

Of all the views that are detached from reality, the most delusional is that Christians are persecuted in the U.S.

Radical expansions of power are often introduced in this way, by persuading people that they affect just a specific, discrete group.

[I]f you want instant, reflexive support for the US government's police and military powers, MSNBC is the place to turn these days.

When you cheer for the erosion of Dzhokhar Tsarnaevs rights, you're cheering for the erosion of your own.

The powerful and the powerless.

Mass surveillance is a universal temptation for any unscrupulous power.

I think Dianne Feinstein may be the most Orwellian political official in Washington.

The American Right has an amazing ability to lionize leaders whose lives are the precise antithesis of the political values that define their image.

Nobody really even knows with whom the US is at war, or where. Everyone just knows that it is vital that it continue in unlimited form indefinitely.

The job of the press is to disprove the falsehoods that power invariably disseminates to protect itself.

Obama supporters pretended that his 2008 campaign was some sort of populist uprising even as Wall Street overwhelmingly supported his candidacy.

Washington likes to threaten the people over whom they exercise power.

Now I would almost arrest Glenn Greenwald, who's the journalist who seems to want to help him get to Ecuador.

What state surveillance actually is is best understood by the NSA's own documents and own words, which I think as you know I happen to have a lot of.