Daniel Espinosa Quotes

Citizens need to know how their countries are being run so that they can hold governments and big business to account.

Right to Information is a small concrete step in making our polity more democratic.

Obama has already rejected the bright sunlight of public knowledge, which is democracy's great disinfectant and cure.

We have a right to know and a duty to discover what you think of the great constitutional issues of our time.

The overarching purpose of access to information legislation … is to facilitate democracy. It does so in two related ways. It helps to ensure first, that citizens have the information required to participate meaningfully in the democratic process, and secondly, that politicians and bureaucrats remain accountable to the citizenry.

The American public has a right to know what's going on.

Ask yourself, have you ever heard any of your PAP MPs ask the hard questions? As a Singaporean, you have a right to information that the Government is refusing to answer.

I'm ready to be insulted as being insufficiently democratic, but I want to be serious ... I am for secret, dark debates.

In order to encourage the free interchange of opinion and the enlightenment of the public, every Swedish subject shall have free access to official documents.

Wikileaks is a democratizing force. Its giving individuals access to decisions and thinking by their representatives and in a democracy that ought to be reflexive.

The responsibility for good government lies not just with governments themselves but also with every other part of the system they operate in, including media, non-governmental organisations and the public.

My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them.

The Transparency Bill is something we should all support - practical steps in promoting an open and accountable democracy.

Part of the problem you have is that you don't have a dialogue between elected officials and their constituents. They've built these barricades, these barriers around themselves and tried to avoid interaction with their constituents.

Whether people care enough about local news to pay for it is, sadly, an entirely different question than whether our democracy requires a strong watchdog function at the local level to ensure safeguards against abuse, chicanery, and outright dishonesty.

In a democracy, citizens pass judgment on their government, and if they are kept in the dark about what their government is doing, they cannot be in a position to make well-grounded decisions.

Access to presidential materials should be as wide as possible.

The Declaration of Independence says when government fails, the people have the right to replace it. Well, New York State government has failed and the people have the right, indeed the people have the the people have the obligation, to act.

The better-informed we are, the more we can do to make sure what's happening is in our interests and is accountable to us.

I think the good old British democracy should keep scrutinising and pressing to get the truth out.

Even in non-democratic countries, people have a legitimate interest in knowing about actions taken by the government.

I mean those people who are interested in good government will certainly contribute in order to make certain there's some counter-balance to those whose interests in good government is less.

Remarkably, governments are beginning to embrace the idea that nothing enhances democracy more than giving voice and information to everybody in the country. Why not open their books if they have nothing to hide?

We see more and more of our Presidents and know less and less about what they do.

The effective functioning of our constitutional democracy depends upon the participation in public life of a citizenry that is well informed