Timothy Noah Quotes

The U.K. government has a responsibility to keep secrets in some circumstances. It also has a responsibility not to abuse that power for other purposes.

The fact is that when it comes to judgment as to what should be secret and what should not be secret, Julian Assange's judgment has been pretty good so far.

It shouldn't take extreme courage and a willingness to go to prison for decades or even life to blow the whistle on bad government acts done in secret. But it does. And that is an immense problem for democracy, one that all journalists should be united in fighting.

Let's face it: WikiLeaks exists because the mainstream media haven't done their job.

In the history of Wikileaks, nobody has claimed that the material being put out is not authentic.

The establishment of Washington is utterly corrupt and is incapable of governing.

Leaks usually have more value to the public at large than the harm which they occasionally do.

Most leaks from large bureaucracies are “good” leaks: no danger to national security, no harm to innocent people, information the public ought to know.

Wikileaks is providing information on what ambassadors are sending to Washington and things like that. Maybe some of that has a right to some kind of secrecy, but there is a heavy burden and I think its pretty hard to meet. I haven't read everything from Wikileaks by any means but the parts that I have read and seen I think are things the public should know.

Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, has on several occasions talked about transparency as an absolute principle. I don't personally believe that.

Government lawyers have a duty to disclose evidence of wrongdoing in the government.

This is a generation weaned on Watergate, and there is no presumption of innocence and no presumption of good intentions. Instead, there is a presumption that, without relentless scrutiny, the government will misbehave.

I was a guy who trusted the government. Now, I don't trust a damn thing they do.

The job of a journalist is to find out stuff. The job of the government - sometimes - is to keep stuff secret. There's a natural tension there.

Too often government responds to the whispers of lobbyists before the cries of the people.

People are entitled to believe the government is constantly lying to them, but it isn't.

The United States government in Washington constantly gives amnesty to its highest officials, even when they commit the most egregious crimes. And yet the idea of amnesty for a whistleblower is considered radical and extreme.

The Obama administration does not hate unauthorized leaks of classified information. They are more responsible for such leaks than anyone. What they hate are leaks that embarrass them or expose their wrongdoing. Those are the only kinds of leaks that are prosecuted.

Distrust of government isn't baseless cynicism. It's realism.

In the Pentagon Papers case, the government asserted in the Supreme Court that the publication of the material was a threat to national security. It turned out it was not a threat to U.S. security. But even if it had been, that doesn't mean that it couldn't be published.

Montanans elected me to the Senate to do away with shady backroom deals and to make government work better.

In Washington, task forces work like Tylenol: they reduce the symptoms of scandal while leaving the substance untouched.

There's a Washington standard of casually putting things off the record. It's really gone too far. I don't know an easy way to turn it back.

You can't believe the government - on anything. And you especially can't believe them when they're talking about important stuff.

I've lived in Washington now for 44 years, and that's a lot of folly to witness up close. Whatever confidence and optimism I felt towards the central government when I got here on January 1, 1970 has pretty much dissipated at the hands of the government.