Edward Snowden Quotes

I have another name for what they're terming whistleblowers, and that's righteous heroes. From Bradley Manning to Snowden. They're people of conscience who are unwilling to turn a blind eye to the crimes of our government. And thank goodness for them.

The vast literature concerning whistleblowers shows that, far from weird extremists, they are really quite ordinary people: male and female, young and old, junior and senior, no more nerdy or obsessive than most hard workers.

I got more whistleblowers from the Secret Service than I do anywhere else. And if you look at that department and agency, it's the one place you can never, ever, ever make a mistake - ever.

You're no longer the engineer or the physicist or the writer - you're the whistleblower.

Whistleblowers play a vital role in ensuring that the federal government is accountable to the people it serves.

Snowden and NSA leaders should be brought together face-to-face for questioning in public by a congressional investigatory committee, with both parties allowed to make their points and to counter the assertions of the other. If Snowden is lying, it will come out. If the NSA is lying, it will come out.

Truth and nonviolence demand that no human being may debar himself from serving any other human being, no matter how sinful he may be.

Moral courage further demands that you assume the responsibility for your own acts.

The responsibility of the writer as a moral agent is to try to bring the truth about matters of human significance to an audience that can do something about them.

The question of whether I, as a whistleblower, should be pardoned, is not for me to answer.

Those of us who believe in human rights and the truth - particularly the journalists and the media - should stand in defense of Julian Assange and Bradley Manning. We owe them a lot for telling us the truth of what is happening in our world, and that is why I would continue to support them.

As we move forward, I am looking for a new leader of the Chicago Police Department to address the problems at the very heart of the policing profession. The problem is sometimes referred to as "the thin blue line." The problem is other times referred to as "the code of silence." It is this tendency to ignore. It is the tendency to deny. It is the tendency, in some cases, to cover up the bad actions of a colleague or colleagues.

The government does not need to know more about what we are doing. We need to know more about what the government is doing. We should be thankful for individuals like Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald who see injustice being carried out by their own government and speak out, despite the risk. They have done a great service to the American people by exposing the truth about what our government is doing in secret.

If I and other whistleblowers are sentenced to long years in prison without so much as a chance to explain our motivations to a jury, it will have a deeply chilling effect on future whistleblowers working as I did to expose government abuse and overreach. It will chill speech. It will corrode the quality of our democracy.

Because others have let us down, it is now our duty to face the hard truths and do the right thing--no matter the personal cost.

The few of understanding, vision rare, Who veiled not from the herd their hearts, but tried, Poor generous fools, to lay their feelings bare, Them have men always burnt and crucified.

In politics intentions count for nothing; actions are what matter.

Duty is one and invariable; it requires no impossibilities, nor can it ever be disregarded with impunity.

It's not intentions that matter. It's actions. We are what we do and say, not what we intend to.

Chelsea Manning's treachery put American lives at risk and exposed some of our nation's most sensitive secrets. President Obama now leaves in place a dangerous precedent that those who compromise our national security won't be held accountable for their crimes.

I brought you the truth about our city and the reason we are in it. If you aren't thanking me for it, you should at least do something about it instead of sitting here on this mess you made, pretending it's a throne!

Eventually we all have to accept full and total responsibility for our actions, everything we have done, and have not done.

The best justification governments can find to shut down information is that lives are at risk. In fact, lives have been at risk as a result of the silences and lies revealed in these leaks.

I think that whoever is the attorney general, you don't want them to be as a yes person for any particular constituency.

I believe in Christianity because the Scriptures said: "The things that have been done in the dark will be known on the house tops."