Bruce Schneier Quotes

A citizenry that is aware of always being watched quickly becomes a compliant and fearful one.

There are eyes everywhere. No blind spot left. What shall we dream of when everything becomes visible? We'll dream of being blind.

There was no such thing as perfect privacy, life was a perpetual concert-hall recital with a captive audience.

Once conform, once do what others do because they do it, and a kind of lethargy steals over all the finer senses of the soul.

Surveillance breeds conformity.

We all live in a televised goldfish bowl.

P.C. is just too Big Brother - telling me how I should act and feel.

Most men are petrified of standing out in any way or being thought superficial.

People are so scared to really voice who they are. They want to be politically correct. Just scared to see what other people's perceptions are.

Every day, there is a person following me, taking pictures. It's bizarre because I'm just going to the gym or getting a smoothie. I don't have the time or energy to be constantly put together all the time, but that's real life.

Someone is always taking a video of me or snapping a photo.

We shouldn't censor ourselves based on the weak idea of "looking cool." It's such a waste of potential awesomeness.

The term Big Brother is from George Orwell's book 1984 - where everyone's watched over by a network of cameras called Big Brother. I've never understood why Orwell chose that phrase for somebody watching you all the time. Isn't that more like Creepy Uncle?

The Earthlings behaved at all times as though there were a big eye in the sky—as though that big eye were ravenous for entertainment.

The individual who is the servant of technique must be completely unconscious of himself.

If people are watching me 365 days a year, 360 days they might be bored to tears. And on the other five days, maybe I would qualify as Satan.

On each landing, opposite the lift shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall. It was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran.

Always eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you. Asleep or awake, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or bed- no escape. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimeters in your skull.

Modern Americans are so exposed, peered at, inquired about, and spied upon as to be increasingly without privacy--members of a ;naked society and denizens of a goldfish bowl.

I think girls are especially worried about being judged, and when you're in high school, everything seems like a bigger deal than it is. As soon as you're out, it feels like forever ago-zip-a-dee-doo-dah! So do what you want, and if people are going to judge you for it, who cares? You might not fit in, but that's okay.

You can't think the thoughts you want to think if you think you're being watched.

I knew naturally as a child not to forfeit my creativity to a world that's all laid out for me. I'll look at everything around me and vow to keep in mind that alla this is just someone's idea. It could have just as well been mine.

Fear of what other people will think is the single most paralyzing dynamic in business and in life. The best moment of my lifewas the day I realized that I know longer give a damn what anybody thinks. That's enormously liberating and freeing, and it's the only way to live your life and do your business.

Americans continue to rapidly homogenize ourselves into a neutered oblivion. For a country founded on the protection of the unique, we relish our sameness.

The torture of being the unseen object, and the constantly observed subject.