Edward Snowden Quotes

The government is supposed to conform to our will. By taking the most important thing you have, your health and your health care, and turning that over to the government, you fundamentally shift the power, a huge chunk of it, from the people to the government. This is not the direction that we want the government to go in this nation.

In the larger life of society, the people are made to submit to the orders of those who were originally meant to serve them—the government and its agents.

The more authority a person asks for in a democracy, the less privacy they’re entitled to.

Government is no sooner created than it becomes too strong for society, and shapes and moulds, as well as controls it.

Government can't do anything for you except in proportion as it can do something to you.

We should know at least the broad strokes of the powers that the government's claiming in our name, and using allegedly, on our behalf. And also against us as well.

We are under [government's] control, and if people don't realize that, they haven't looked around. And if they're not paranoid, they haven't thought about it.

We should view our government the way we should a friendly, cuddly lion. Just because he's friendly and cuddly shouldn't blind us to the fact that he's still got teeth and claws.

Anything that shifts power from the individual judgment of free citizens to government is a bad thing.

The FBI has always supported big business and big government.

Formerly government was the responsibility of people; now people were the responsibility of government.

Any unveiling is also veiling. No matter how transparent our governments want to be, governments will be selectively transparent.

I want to talk to these people because they stay in power and you change all the time.

Liberal Democrats in government will not follow the last Labour government by sounding the retreat on the protection of civil liberties in the United Kingdom. It continues to be essential that our civil liberties are safeguarded, and that the state is not given the powers to snoop on its citizens at will.

The Federal Government is exploiting public fear to redefine the relationship between the rulers and the American people.

Gun control means control. It means control for the government and the government starts controlling the people.

This is a country for, of, and by the people not for, of, and by the government. If we turn it over to them we cannot complain about what they're doing because this is a natural course of men and we have to hold their feet to the fire.

Freedom is our most precious commodity and if we are not eternally vigilant, government will take it all away. Individual freedom demands individual responsibility.

Even in non-democratic countries, people have a legitimate interest in knowing about actions taken by the government.

Privacy is tremendously important. I believe the American people, and all people, should be skeptical of government power, should ask hard questions: What is the authority? What is the oversight? That's the way it ought to be.

Politicians love regulating. That's part of the whole power structure.

We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government has grown out of too much government.

You may not be thinking about politics, but politics is thinking about you.

We must have government, but we must watch them like a hawk.