Glenn Greenwald Quotes

Censorship always defeats it own purpose, for it creates in the end the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion.

As for civil liberties, any one who is not vigilant may one day find himself living, if not in a police state, at least in a police city.

A totalitarian society makes enormous demands on the courage of men, and a partially totalitarian society makes even greater demands because the general anxiety is greater.

I believe there's something out there watching over us. Unfortunately, it's the government

We have a free society, and the totalitarian states are dungeons. We have totally different methods of population control…. We can’t control people so we have to control what they think.

The path of freedom is blocked much more by those who wish to obey than by those who wish to command.

We encounter the dilemma of freedom versus authority in all sorts of places but probably nowhere more frequently than in the area of Big Brother's ongoing efforts to protect us from ourselves – efforts that many people view as an invasion of their privacy or as infringement upon their God-given right to be stupid (though they don't usually put it that way).

It may be that by watching everywhere we go, by watching everything we do, by analyzing every word we say, by waiting and passing judgment over every association we make and every person we love, that we could uncover a terrorist plot, or we could discover more criminals. But is that the kind of society we want to live in?

Anticipatory obedience teaches authorities what is possible and accelerates unfreedom.

When people understand that they are constantly monitored, they are more conformist - they are less willing to take up controversial positions - and that kind of mass conformity is incompatible with democracy.

If you give up freedom to get security, you deserve neither.

All of the evidence highlights the implicit bargain that is offered to citizens: pose no challenge and you have nothing to worry about. Mind your own business, and support or at least tolerate what we do, and you'll be fine. Put differently, you must refrain from provoking the authority that wields surveillance powers if you wish to be deemed free of wrongdoing. This is a deal that invites passivity, obedience, and conformity. The safest course, the way to ensure being “left alone,” is to remain quiet, unthreatening, and compliant.

Martin Luther King was a victim of surveillance, and had great solidarity with victims of surveillance.

Social order at the expense of liberty is hardly a bargain.

P.C. is just too Big Brother - telling me how I should act and feel.

Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men.

The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism.

Cities have become places where we are controlled, by CCTV and other means, in the same way as machines are controlled. My works provide an imaginative space in which this can be challenged. It's like opening a window in a closed room.

Persecution is the first law of society because it is always easier to suppress criticism than to meet it.

It is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could someday facilitate a police state.

The fact is that censorship always defeats its own purpose, for it creates, in the end, the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion.

A functioning police state needs no police.

People aren't interested in others controlling what they can do or read or see in the privacy of their own homes.

Attempts to tame the wayward and domesticate the riotous, to make the unknowable predictable and enchain the free-roaming - all such things sound the death knell to love.

Any society where it's a crime or a hassle to be different is a society based on psychological fascism.