Julian Assange Quotes


"WikiLeaks is designed to make capitalism more free and ethical."
- Julian Assange
(Related: Capitalism)

"Wikileaks is a mechanism to maximize the flow of information to maximize the amount of action leading to just reform."
- Julian Assange
(Related: Action, Information, Leading, Reform)

"When it comes to the point where you occasionally look forward to being in prison on the basis that you might be able to spend a day reading a book, the realization dawns that perhaps the situation has become a little more stressful than you would like."
- Julian Assange
(Related: Being, Day, Prison, Reading)

"What is the possible benefit? Can this material save lives? Can it improve the quality of life in Iraq? Can it tend to shape our perceptions of how war should and should not be conducted? Can it shape our perceptions of who should be conducting war and in what manner? And the answer to that is a clear yes."
- Julian Assange
(Related: Life, War, Quality, Iraq, Perceptions)

"Well, there's a question as to what sort of information is important in the world, what sort of information can achieve reform. And there's a lot of information. So information that organizations are spending economic effort into concealing, that's a really good signal that when the information gets out, there's a hope of it doing some good."
- Julian Assange
(Related: Hope, Effort, Information, Question, Reform, World)

"Well, I mean, the real attack on truth is tabloid journalism in the United States."
- Julian Assange
(Related: Truth, Journalism, states, United)

"The supply of leaks is very large. It's helpful for us to have more people in this industry. It's protective to us."
- Julian Assange
(Related: People)

"We like to engage in a normal publishing effort, which is to act in a responsible manner and make sure the material is not likely to harm anyone, that it is properly investigated by quality news organizations, and by lawyers and human rights groups and so on."
- Julian Assange
(Related: Quality, Act, Effort, Rights, Harm, Human rights, Lawyers, News, Publishing)

"These megaleaks... They're an important phenomenon, and they're only going to increase."
- Julian Assange
"True information does good."
- Julian Assange
(Related: Information)

"We always expect tremendous criticism. It is my role to be the lightning rod ... to attract the attacks against the organization for our work, and that is a difficult role. On the other hand, I get undue credit."
- Julian Assange
(Related: Work, Credit, Criticism)

"We don't have sources who are dissidents on other sources. Should they come forward, that would be a tricky situation for us. But we're presumably acting in such a way that people feel morally compelled to continue our mission, not to screw it up."
- Julian Assange
(Related: People, Acting, Mission)

"We get information in the mail, the regular postal mail, encrypted or not, vet it like a regular news organization, format it - which is sometimes something that's quite hard to do, when you're talking about giant databases of information - release it to the public and then defend ourselves against the inevitable legal and political attacks."
- Julian Assange
(Related: Legal, Information, Mail, News, Public, Talking)

"We have a way of dealing with information that has sort of personal - personally identifying information in it. But there are legitimate secrets - you know, your records with your doctor; that's a legitimate secret. But we deal with whistleblowers that are coming forward that are really sort of well motivated."
- Julian Assange
(Related: Information, Secrets)

"We have some material on spying by a major government on the tech industry. Industrial espionage."
- Julian Assange
(Related: Government)

"These big-package releases. There should be a cute name for them."
- Julian Assange
(Related: Cute, Name)

"The corruption in reporting starts very early. It's like the police reporting on the police."
- Julian Assange
(Related: Corruption, Police)

"Stopping leaks is a new form of censorship."
- Julian Assange
(Related: Censorship)

"That's a problem. I mean, like any sort of growing startup organization, we are sort of overwhelmed by our growth. And that means we're getting enormous quantity of whistleblower disclosures of a very high caliber, but don't have enough people to actually process and vet this information."
- Julian Assange
(Related: People, Growth, Information, Quantity)

"Intelligence agencies keep things secret because they often violate the rule of law or of good behavior."
- Julian Assange
(Related: Intelligence, Behavior, Law)

"In the history of Wikileaks, nobody has claimed that the material being put out is not authentic."
- Julian Assange
(Related: History, Being)

"In my role as Wikileaks editor, I've been involved in fighting off many legal attacks. To do that, and keep our sources safe, we have had to spread assets, encrypt everything, and move telecommunications and people around the world to activate protective laws in different national jurisdictions."
- Julian Assange
(Related: Legal, People, Fighting, Laws, World)

"If journalism is good, it is controversial, by its nature."
- Julian Assange
(Related: Nature, Journalism)

"I mean there's enormous pressures to harmonize freedom of speech legislation and transparency legislation around the world - within the E.U., between China and the United States. Which way is it going to go? It's hard to see."
- Julian Assange
(Related: Freedom, Legislation, Speech, states, United, World)

"As we've gotten more successful, there's a gap between the speed of our publishing pipeline and the speed of our receiving submissions pipeline. Our pipeline of leaks has been increasing exponentially as our profile rises, and our ability to publish is increasing linearly."
- Julian Assange
(Related: Successful, Ability, Publishing)

"As we have seen, WikiLeaks is a robust organization. During my time in solitary confinement in the basement of a Victorian prison, we continue to release, our media partners continued to write stories. The important revelations from this material continue to come out. We have approximately 2,000 cables into 250,000."
- Julian Assange
(Related: Time, Media, Prison)

"It is the role of good journalism to take on powerful abusers, and when powerful abusers are taken on, there's always a bad reaction. So we see that controversy, and we believe that is a good thing to engage in."
- Julian Assange
(Related: Controversy, Journalism)