Edward Snowden Quotes

It has been held, right up to the present day, that the freedom of individual must take second place to the security of the State.....

The Great Firewall of China and the unrestricted surveillance by the National Security Agency illustrate a tendency for the state to assert its interests at the expense of individuals.

History has shown that Big Government expands quickest in the immediate aftermath of a crisis - real or manufactured.

The national security state controls the President. It controls most of the executive departments.

‘National Security’ is, in effect, a translation of the European concept of ‘raison d’etat’, providing cover for a government that felt free to break through all traditional limits on its power.

Where the very safety of the country depends upon the resolution to be taken, no consideration of justice or injustice, humanity or cruelty, nor of glory or of shame, should be allowed to prevail. But putting all other considerations aside, the only question should be: What course will save the life and liberty of the country?

The definition of a security state is one that prioritizes security over all other considerations.

With the shock of war the state comes into its own again.

We have a media that goes along with the government by parroting phrases intended to provoke a certain emotional response - for example, "national security." Everyone says "national security" to the point that we now must use the term "national security." But it is not national security that they're concerned with; it is state security. And that's a key distinction.

The divine impeccability of the immortal [Soviet] State turned out not only to have suppressed individual human beings but also to have defended them, to have comforted them in their weakness, to have justified their insignificance. The State had taken on its own shoulders the entire weight of responsibility; it had liberated people from the chimera of conscience.

American leaders worry about the security of their country. Israeli leaders worry about the survival of their country.

The belief that security can be obtained by throwing a small state to the wolves is a fatal delusion.

Give government the weapons to fight your enemy and it will use them against you.

Instead of recognizing the State as ‘the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men,’ the run of mankind, with rare exceptions, regards it not only as a final and indispensable entity, but also as, in the main, beneficent. The mass-man, ignorant of its history, regards its character and intentions as social rather than anti-social; and in that faith he is willing to put at its disposal an indefinite credit of knavery, mendacity and chicane, upon which its administrators may draw at will.

Look, the FBI has the tools necessary un-American activities in our country. It goes on, we shouldn't even be talking about it.

A huge national security state has developed in the United States since World War II. Its function is to buttress anticommunist, procapitalist governments and undermine and destroy popular movements whenever possible.

Government [is] an illusion the governed should not encourage.

The second term of the Bush administration and first five years of the Obama presidency have been devoted to codifying and institutionalizing the vast and unchecked powers that are typically vested in leaders in the name of war. Those powers of secrecy, indefinite detention, mass surveillance, and due-process-free assassination are not going anywhere. They are now permanent fixtures not only in the US political system but, worse, in American political culture.

Briefly, the State is that organization in society which attempts to maintain a monopoly of the use of force and violence in a given territorial area; in particular, it is the only organization in society that obtains its revenue not by voluntary contribution or payment for services rendered but by coercion.

There is a big problem. It's called encryption. And the people in San Bernardino were communicating with people who the FBI had been watching. But because their phone was encrypted, because the intelligence officials could not see who they were talking to, it was lost.

If the State does not acquire supremacy over [vast private] enterprises, it becomes their puppet, and they become the real State.

Louis XIV was very frank and sincere when he said: I am the State. The modern statist is modest. He says: I am the servant of the State; but, he implies, the State is God. You could revolt against a Bourbon king, and the French did it. This was, of course, a struggle of man against man. But you cannot revolt against the god State and against his humble handy man, the bureaucrat.

As government grows, freedom recedes.

The superficial distinctions of Fascism, Bolshevism, Hitlerism, are the concern of journalists and publicists; the serious student sees in them only one root-idea of a complete conversion of social power into State power.

All government is an ugly necessity.