Barton Gellman Quotes

Don't Let Your Government Speak for You!

In a single generation, the Internet has given to virtually every person on the face of the earth the ability to communicate with fellow human beings on virtually any topic, at any time, and in every nook and cranny on the globe. This magnificent invention has done this without succumbing to government control.

The people will save their government, if the government itself will allow them.

The maxim, that governments ought to train the people in the way in which they should go, sounds well. But is there any reason for believing that a government is more likely to lead the people in the right way than the people to fall into the right way of themselves?

What was extraordinary about Occupy London was that it was a village with a louder voice than one of the biggest cities of the world.

It's always the small people who change things. It's never the politicians or the big guys. I mean, who pulled down the Berlin wall? It was all the people in the streets. The specialists didn't have a clue the day before.

The Arab Spring is kind of a perfect model for how people are going to use technology to act collectively in their own interest in the future. There's never been a revolution that was coordinated by social media to the degree that the Arab Spring was.

Now technology gives you a chance to help organize. You don't have to wait for either the inefficiency or the corruption. You don't have to wait for government. You can actually self-organize and build institutions bottom up.

The primary object of non-co-operation is nowhere stated to be paralysis of the Government. The primary object is self-purification.

If the government or the parties won't address our needs, we will. It's about direct action, even civil disobedience.

Every great movement in the world starts with a tiny group of people who simply refuse to accept a situation.

I do believe that if millions of people do stand up and fight back, we can stop Donald Trump from doing some really awful things.

At its essence, the message of the Occupations is simply this: ‘Here in the face of power we will sit and create a new society, in which you do count.’

Social change cannot come above the intellect, it comes about by people suffering. And the more people are related to that, the more they lose respect for an existing government. They will seek another direction. If there are too many people who seek a new direction, then the existing government calls upon the army and police to manage society – that is called fascism.

If scientists and scholars were to become "collectively self-organised and consciously activist" today, they would probably devote themselves to service to state and private power. Those who have different goals should (and do) become organized and activist.

I think, you're not blagging me on this ridiculous journey, with this bit of paper. I think if you want to change things, it's not with an X on a piece of paper, it's with an X on someone's forehead.

I think the Occupy movement will, or at least should, become a protean movement of ideas, as well as action, where the element of surprise remains with the protesters. We need to preserve the element of an intellectual ambush and a physical manifestation that takes the government and the police by surprise. It has to keep re-imagining itself, because holding territory may not be something the movement will be allowed to do in a state as powerful and violent as the United States.

Non-co-operation is a nation's determination to improve.

You'd think one day we'd learn. You don't get anything unless you fight for it, united and with visible numbers. If ACT UP taught us anything, it taught us that.

The really critical thing isn't who's sitting in he White House, but who is sitting in the streets, in the cafeterias, in the halls of government, in the factories. Who is protesting, who is occupying offices and demonstrating ? - those are the things that determine what happens.

All forms of government ultimately are not going to succeed in trying to control or censor the Internet.

The quintessential exercise of free speech in a culture supposedly built on that concept and dedicated to it, the Internet's development is as historically important to humanity perhaps even more so as Gutenberg 's invention of the printing press.

People may say 'What can I do? I'm only one person.' But we've proven that when we come together demonstrate, and speak our piece, there is no way the power structure can avoid being attentive.

It's not about contraception. It's about economic liberty, it's about freedom of speech, it's about freedom of religion, it's about government control of your lives and it's got to stop!

Governments are suspicious of literature because it is a force that eludes them.