Edward Snowden Quotes

This administration seems intent on accumulating unchecked power.

It's very clear that the Bush Administration is out of control. It contains some truly dangerous people.

The state can be and has often been in the course of history the main source of mischief and disaster.

But let's be clear. We're talking about a country where there's no opposition. As leader he can ignore Parliament and - sorry that's Tony Blair isn't it? Um, so he doesn't even have to ask the country before he goes to war - sorry that's still Tony Blair.

The average European does not seem to feel free until he succeeds in enslaving and oppressing others.

I think governments are the cancer of civilization.

Thank God that the people that run this world are not smart enough to keep running it forever. You know, everybody gets a handle on it for a little while.

The pathological degree to which former Vice President Dick Cheney operated in secrecy led to government abuses that we'll probably spend years learning about.

The spirit of moderation in a state of overbearing power is a phenomenon which has not yet appeared, and which no wise man will expect ever to see.

They who have put out the people's eyes reproach them for their blindness.

Power is poison. Its effects on Presidents had always been tragic; chiefly as an almost insane excitement at first, and a worse reaction afterwards; but also because no mind is so well balanced as to bar the strain of seizing unlimited force without habit or knowledge of it; and finding it disputed with him by hungry packs of wolves and hounds whose lives depend on snatching the carrion.

The chief bandit is the head of the state himself.

National security is like that vague term Executive privilege. Both terms have been abused; both concepts have been damaged; they've been used as shields for secrecy.

The shortest way to ruin a country is to give power to demogogues.

... a step in the direction of tyranny.

We have the President assuming powers that are never going to end.

The state, whenever it is deemed convenient, will abrogate its responsibility to protect the constitutional rights ... [in the face of] variables such as race or political considerations.

This case serves as an appalling reminder of the evils that result when large numbers of the politically powerless are placed at the mercy of institutions engendered and controlled by a politically powerful few.

Independently of its misdeeds, the mere power, — the bare existence of such a power, — is a thing irreconcilable with the nature and spirit of our institutions

President Maliki: The appetite has grown with the eating. He has become a real dictator.

Russia's leaders, rich with oil wealth and corrupt with power, have rejected democratic ideals and the obligations of a responsible power.

The problem is that the American public is suspicious of executive power shrouded in secrecy. In the absence of an official picture of what our government is doing, and by what authority, many in the public fill the void by envisioning the worst.

It was my long-held belief that police brutality would increase under the Trump administration.

If you have decisions taken from time to time at the level of the executives, which gives the impression of being discriminatory, if you are not open when government is functioning, then obviously people will make allegations.

A dictator keeps control and leads. A tyrant is someone selfish who destroys.