Barack Obama Quotes

Transparency in government, no less than transparency in choosing government, remains a vital national interest in a democracy.

As long as the government's actions are secret, it cannot be held accountable. A government for the people and by the people should be transparent to the people.

And one of the things I've tried to do in my first months in office is to give more Georgians - reporters and members of the general public alike - a closer look at how their government works.

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.

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?

I want to make sure we are presenting to the South Australian people a Government that is open and accountable. I want to make sure that we maintain public confidence in government at all levels.

Open government’ must not be sacrificed on the altar of bureaucratic secrecy.

Government has got to open up and engage citizenry as partners.

We don't hide our space program. We don't keep secrets and cover things up. We do it all up front and in public. That's the way freedom is, and we wouldn't change it for a minute.

I would like to see transparency become the default for the American government: Abolish the Freedom of Information Act so we don't have to ask government for information but government must ask to keep information from us. The more transparent government is, the more collaborative it can become. The more our officials learn to trust us - with information and a role in government - the more we can trust them.

Secrecy and a free, democratic government don't mix.

We think, in America, that it is necessary to introduce the people into every department of government, as far as they are capable of exercising it, and that this is the only way to ensure a long continued and honest administration of its powers.

Accountability is the essence of democracy. If people do not know what their government is doing, they cannot be truly self-governing. The national security state assumes the government secrets are too important to be shared, that only those in the know can see classified information, that only the president has all the facts, that we must simply trust that our rulers of acting in our interest.

My administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in government.

Open government is, within limits, an ideal that we all share. U.S. President Barack Obama endorsed it when he took office in January 2009.

I promised to run the most open and transparent administration in Britain. That is why, with this brutally honest and unprecedented progress report, I am determined to level with Londoners.

Our democratic values also include - and our national security demands - open and transparent government. Some information obviously needs to be protected. And since his first days in office, President Obama has worked to strike the proper balance between the security the American people deserve and the openness our democratic society expects.

It's my father's legacy. My father's view was that the public is the employer of these government employees and has the right to know what they're up to.

The Internet is changing the way we think of our relationship with government; it has the potential to bring to life what Abraham Lincoln said about the presidency being an instrument of the people.

Ever since I arrived in Washington in April 2009, I have been fighting for more transparency and accountability in government.

I will run an open government that speaks with honesty, seeks opinion, listens to its citizens.

Our public officials have forgotten that they are ultimately accountable to the people who put them in office, that the information they keep in secrecy belongs to all of us.

We should be able to go to our government and get clear answers.

The government of the German Democratic Republic rejects secret policies. It works for the people, and only the people, so it does not need to keep secrets like the warmongers.

After all, I have spent the better part of my adult life insisting that government be open... that government be accessible... and that government be held accountable to people who voted us into office.