Edward Snowden Quotes

An efficient government is dangerous in the hands of the wrong man. Sadly, the right sort of man never seems interested in the job.

When scrutiny is lacking, tyranny, corruption and man's baser qualities have a better chance of entering into the public business of any government.

When you give the government an inch, they take a mile.

Washington is a cesspool of non-accountability.

When government gets too big, freedom is lost. Government is supposed to be the servant. But when a government can tax the people with no limit or restraint on what the government can take, then the government has become the master.

There's very little different between the way the government operates in America and the way criminals do.

The master's irresponsible power has no such bound.

Many cults start off with high ideals that get corrupted by leaders or their board of advisors who become power-hungry and dominate and control members' lives. No group with high ideals starts off as a 'cult'; they become one when their errant ways are exposed.

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.

Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principle.

It is a very bad idea for governments to create arbitrary and unfair outcomes, or outcomes resulting from the passions and whims of the government rather than from the law, just because they have the power to do so.

The American people do not begrudge anyone his or her power until they start abusing it.

I truly believe that all power corrupts. Such is probably the thinking behind every political film ever made in Hollywood.

The greater the power, the more need there is for transparency, because if the power is abused, the result can be so enormous. On the other hand, those people who do not have power, we mustn't reduce their power even more by making them yet more transparent.

A government is the only vessel that leaks from the top.

The more expansive government is, the more perils people face in daily lives, be it from IRS agents or from child support services, or from other agencies that often have little or no legal restraints on their power.

It is a tragedy indeed that new generations, taking office, attribute failures in governance to insufficient power, and seek more of it.

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.

Reading Shakespeare we see that power can be poisonous. In the case of Bush and Cheney testosterone can be poisonous.

Government ought to be all outside and no inside [for] corruption thrives in secret places [and] it [is] a fair presumption that secrecy means impropriety.

America is just the country that shows how all the written guarantees in the world for freedom are no protection against tyranny and oppression of the worst kind. There the politician has come to be looked upon as the very scum of society.

There is always some plausible reason for the latitudinarian constructions which are resorted to for the purpose of acquiring power – some evil to be avoided, or some good to be attained by pushing the powers of the government beyond their legitimate boundary. It is by yielding to such influences that constitutions are gradually undermined, and finally overthrown.

More power than any good man should have, and more power than any other kind of man ought to have.

These are people who don't believe the government can possibly get too big. It's not possible for it to get too big. It's not possible for the government to get too powerful. It's not possible. And yet they are worried at the 'New York Times' about what is happening to it under the guidance of the presidency and Mr. Obama.

The worst sense of security is a false one. It's hard for people to wrap their heads around the idea that those in charge - federal, state and local agencies - might be cheating the system. But, all too often, that is exactly what happens.