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Julian Assange
59 quotes
“We all only live once. So we are obligated to make good use of the time that we have and to do something that is meaningful and satisfying. This is something that I find meaningful and satisfying. That is my temperament. I enjoy creating systems on a grand scale, and I enjoy helping people who are vulnerable. And I enjoy crushing bastards.”
Julian Assange (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You can’t publish a paper on physics without the full experimental data and results, that should be the standard in journalism. You can’t do it in newspapers because there isn’t enough space, but now with the internet there is.”
Julian Assange (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Large newspapers are routinely censored by legal costs. It is time this stopped. It is time a country said, enough is enough, justice must be seen, history must be preserved, and we will give shelter from the storm.”
Julian Assange (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That’s arguably what spy agencies do — high-tech investigative journalism. It’s time that the media upgraded its capabilities along those lines.”
Julian Assange (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Seeing ongoing political reforms that have a real impact on people all over the world is extremely satisfying. But we want every person who's having a dispute with their kindergarten to feel confident about sending us material.”
Julian Assange (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is impossible to correct abuses unless we know that they’re going on.”
Julian Assange (born 1971) first seen 2010 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Julian Assange at the Oslo Freedom Forum, 26-29 April 2010. URL accessed on 8 July 2010. (YouTube video).
“The sense of perspective that interaction with multiple cultures gives you I find to be extremely valuable, because it allows you to see the structure of a country with greater clarity, and gives you a sense of mental independence. You're not swept up in the trivialities of a nation. You can concentrate on the serious matters.”
Julian Assange (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is the media that controls the boundaries of what is politically permissible, so better to change the media. Profit motives work against it, but if we can have the audience understand that most other forms of journalism are not credible, then it may be a forced move.”
Julian Assange (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The final nail in the coffin was that I went to the hundredth anniversary of physics at the ANU. There were some 1500 visitors there - four Nobel prize winners - and every goddamn one of them was carting around, on their backs, a backpack given to them by the Defence Science Technology Organisation. At least it was an Australian defence science organisation. And there was just something about their attire, and the way they moved their bodies, and of course the bags on their backs didn't help much either. I couldn't respect them as men.”
Julian Assange (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“WikiLeaks will not comply with legally abusive requests from Scientology any more than WikiLeaks has complied with similar demands from Swiss banks, Russian offshore stem-cell centers, former African kleptocrats, or the Pentagon.”
Julian Assange (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Capable, generous men do not create victims, they nurture them.”
Julian Assange (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You have to start with the truth. The truth is the only way that we can get anywhere. Because any decision-making that is based upon lies or ignorance can't lead to a good conclusion.”
Julian Assange (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The west has fiscalised its basic power relationships through a web of contracts, loans, shareholdings, bank holdings and so on. In such an environment it is easy for speech to be "free" because a change in political will rarely leads to any change in these basic instruments. Western speech, as something that rarely has any effect on power, is, like badgers and birds, free.”
Julian Assange (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sweden is the Saudi Arabia of feminism.”
Julian Assange (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All memoir is prostitution.”
Julian Assange (born 1971) first seen 2011 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: After reading the first draft of a biography about himself (March 2011), as quoted in
“I would be happy to accept asylum, political asylum, in India — a nation I love. In return, I will bring Mayawati a range of the finest British footwear.”
Julian Assange (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The goal is justice, the method is transparency. It's important not to confuse the goal and the method.”
Julian Assange (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Citizens have a right and a duty to scrutinise the state.”
Julian Assange (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I may be a chauvinist pig of some sort, but I'm no rapist.”
Julian Assange (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Vanity in a newspaper man is like perfume on a whore; they use it to fend off a dark whiff of themselves.”
Julian Assange (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I never had a mentor. I was forced to make myself up as I went along.”
Julian Assange (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Once a media group is powerful for long enough it starts to enter into a relationship with other powerful groups, that is very natural, because other powerful groups seek its favour, seek to make deals and agreements with it, and the individuals who run it. And it starts to stop seeing itself as a group that holds powerful groups to account and starts seeing itself as part of the social network of the elite.”
Julian Assange (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If it was the case that WikiLeaks grew to be a very large and powerful media group and remained there for a long time, of course we would enter into the same elite power relationships and would become corrupted by it.”
Julian Assange (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is a view that one should never be permitted to be criticized for being even possibly in the future engaged in a contributory act that might be immoral, and that that type of arse-covering is more important than actually saving people's lives. That it is better to let a thousand people die than risk going to save them and possibly running over someone on the way. And that is something that I find to be philosophically repugnant.”
Julian Assange (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This is not justice; never could this be justice, the verdict was ordained long ago. Its function is not to determine questions such as guilt or innocence, or truth or falsehood. It is a public relations exercise, designed to provide the government with an alibi for posterity. It is a show of wasteful vengeance; a theatrical warning to people of conscience.”
Julian Assange (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In my experience it is more reliable and fairer to look at peoples interests and expenditure rather than try to diagnose their inner mental state, as the latter often lets people project their own biases.”
Julian Assange (born 1971) first seen 2014 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Julian Assange Says "Apolitical Futurism of Star Trek" Fits Google (ByMatt Novak Published September 15, 2014 Comments (30))
“Our No. 1 enemy is ignorance. And I believe that is the No. 1 enemy for everyone — it's not understanding what actually is going on in the world.”
Julian Assange (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Also quoted by: 朱利安·阿桑奇 (zh)
“Censorship represents Fear by Big Information. 'Stopping leaks' is a new form of censorship.”
Julian Assange (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In a spectacular electronic intrusion and information dump, sympathetic backers operating under the Anonymous banner had exposed a $2-million-a-month subversion campaign targeting Wikileaks and its supporters (including Glenn Greenwald), which had been prepared by a group of private security contractors on behalf of Bank of America. (p.11)”
Julian Assange (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“At this point, the delegation was one part Google, three parts US foreign-policy establishment, but I was still none the wiser. (p. 17)”
Julian Assange (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was at this point that I realized Eric Schmidt might not have been an emissary of Google alone. Whether officially or not, he had been keeping some company that placed him very close to Washington, DC, including a well-documented relationship with President Obama. Not only had Hillary Clinton's people known that Eric Schmidt's partner had visited me, but they had also elected to use her as a back channel. (pp. 20-21)”
Julian Assange (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The received wisdom in advanced capitalistic societies is that there still exists an organic "civil society sector" in which institutions form autonomously and come together to manifest the interests and will of citizens. The fable has it that the boundaries of this sector are respected by actors from government and the "private sector," leaving a safe space for NGOs and nonprofits to advocate for things like human rights, free speech, and accountable government.”
Julian Assange (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This sounds like a great idea. But if it was ever true, it has not been for decades. Since at least the 1970s, authentic actors like unions and churches have folded under a sustained assault by free-market statism, transforming "civil society" into a buyer's market for political factions and corporate interests looking to exert influence at arm's length. The last forty years have seen a huge proliferation of think tanks and political NGOs whose purpose, beneath all the verbiage, is to execute political agendas by proxy. (p. 25)”
Julian Assange (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Schmidt's emergence as Google's "foreign minister"--making pomp and ceremony state visits across geopolitical fault lines--had not come out of nowhere; it had been presaged by years of assimilation within US establishment networks of reputation and influence. (pp. 34-35)”
Julian Assange (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“By all appearances, Google's bosses genuinely believe in the civilizing power of enlightened multinational corporations, and they see this mission as continuous with the shaping of the world according to the better judgement of the "benevolent superpower," They will tell you that open-mindedness is a virtue, but all perspectives that challenge the exceptionalist drive at the heart of American foreign policy will remain invisible to them. This is the impenetrable banality of "don't be evil," They believe that they are doing good. And that is a problem. (p. 35)”
Julian Assange (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nobody wants to acknowledge that Google has grown big and bad. But it has. Schmidt's tenure as CEO saw Google integrate with the shadiest of US power structures as it expanded into a geographically invasive megacorporation. (p. 37)”
Julian Assange (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Whether it is being just a company or "more than just a company," Google's geopolitical aspirations are firmly enmeshed within the foreign-policy agenda of the world's largest superpower. (p. 46)”
Julian Assange (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Let me first frame this. I looked at something that I had seen going on in the world, which is that I thought there were too many unjust acts. And I wanted there to be more just acts, and fewer unjust acts. (pp. 66-67)”
Julian Assange (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[Y]ou can affect a lot of people with a small amount of information. Therefore, you can change the behavior of many people with a small amount of information. The question then arises as to what kinds of information will produce behavior which is just and disincentivize behavior which is unjust. (p. 67)”
Julian Assange (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was clear to me that all over the world publishing is a problem. Whether than it through self-censorship or overt censorship. (p. 69)”
Julian Assange (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The issue of preserving politically salient intellectual content while it is under attack is central to what Wikileaks does, because that's what we're after. We're after those bits that people are trying to suppress because we suspect, usually rightly, that they're expending economic work on suppressing those bits because they perceive that those bits are going to induce some change. (p. 83)”
Julian Assange (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I think that the instincts human beings have are actually much better than the societies that we have. (p. 118)”
Julian Assange (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I often say that censorship is always a cause for celebration. It is always an opportunity because it reveals fear of reform. It means that the power position is so weak that you have got to care what people think. (p. 121)”
Julian Assange (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Power is mostly the illusion of power. The Pentagon demanded we destroy our publications. We kept publishing. Clinton denounced us and said we were an attack on the entire "international community". We kept publishing. I was put in prison and under house arrest. We kept publishing. We went head to head with the NSA getting Edward Snowden out of Hong Kong, we won and got him asylum. Clinton tried to destroy us and was herself destroyed. Elephants, it seems, can be brought down with string. Perhaps there are no elephants.”
Julian Assange (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If wars can be started with lies, they can be stopped by truth.”
Julian Assange (born 1971) first seen 2021 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in Fate Of Anti-War Journalism Lies in Upcoming Assange Hearings, Sam Carliner, (22 October 2021)
“[Mr Assange's application did not raise] an arguable point of law”
Julian Assange (born 1971) first seen 2022 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A court spokesman Julian Assange denied permission to appeal against extradition (14 March 2022)
“Pope Francis never stopped championing peace, compassion, and justice. A true ally in the fight for Julian Assange’s freedom. May he rest in peace.”
Julian Assange (born 1971) first seen 2025 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Bryony Gooch, Julian Assange makes rare public appearance at Pope Francis’ funeral, The Independent (April 26, 2025)
“Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence and thereby eventually lose all ability to defend ourselves and those we love. In a modern economy it is impossible to seal oneself off from injustice. If we have brains or courage, then we are blessed and called on not to frit these qualities away, standing agape at the ideas of others, winning pissing contests, improving the efficiencies of the neocorporate state, or immersing ourselves in obscuranta, but rather to prove the vigor of our talents against the strongest opponents of love we can find. If we can only live once, then let it be a daring adventure that draws on all our powers. Let it be with similar types whos hearts and heads we may be proud of. Let our grandchildren delight to find the start of our stories in their ears but the endings all around in their wandering eyes. The whole universe or the structure that perceives it is a worthy opponent, but try as I may I can not escape the sound of suffering. Perhaps as an old man I will take great comfort in pottering around in a lab and gently talking to students in the summer evening and will accept suffering with insouciance. But not now; men in their prime, if they have convictions are tasked to act on them.”
Julian Assange (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are not about to leave the field of doing good simply because harm might happen … In our four-year publishing history no one has ever come to physical harm that we are aware of or that anyone has alleged. On the other hand, we have changed governments and constitutions and had tremendous positive outcomes...We wanted to make the news, not be the news. But that produced extraordinary curiosity as to who we were ... this attempt not to be the news, made us the news... We are creating a space behind us that permits a form of journalism which lives up to the name that journalism has always tried to establish for itself. We are creating that space because we are taking on the criticism that comes from robust exposure of powerful groups... We do not have national security concerns. We have concerns about human beings.. We have had over 100 legal attacks. We have been victorious in almost every single legal attack... we operate within the rule of law.”
Julian Assange (born 1971) first seen 2010 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Julian Assange, monk of the online age who thrives on intellectual battle, Carole Cadwalladr, The Guardian, (1 August 2010)
“I've never said that secrecy doesn't have its place, in fact it's a cornerstone of WikiLeaks, is secrecy. It is protecting the identity of our sources, so it's a cornerstone of our operations. Privacy or secrecy gives organisations an edge over actors who are hostile to them, so it is important for small organisations that are acting in the public's-, public interest to have secrecy. Equally it is important that large and powerful organisations never believe that they have absolute secrecy. It's not important that everything be revealed instantly from them, but it is important that they never feel secure that any particular piece of information will never be revealed. Because it is that fear that some plan will be revealed that keeps them accountable to the degree that they are accountable at all.”
Julian Assange (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source