Ahmet Necdet Sezer Quotes

Unfettered discretion [in obtaining information could] alter the relationship between citizen and government in a way that is inimical to democratic society.

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.

We believe that this is not right for a democracy to make revolutions the beacon of promoting democracy.

Since 9/11, the Bush administration has used that tragic event as a justification to rip up our constitution and our civil liberties. And I honestly believe that one or two 9/11s, and martial law will be declared in our country and we're inching towards a police state.

There is growing use of government intrusion into your creative space…. The government is able to see more deeply into our intellectual lives.

We are ... so anxious that neither the police nor the security service pry into private lives, that there is no machinery for reporting the moral misbehaviour of [Cabinet] Ministers.... It is perhaps better thus, than we should have a "police state.

When truth is no longer free, freedom is no longer real: the truths of the police are the truths of today.

The government continues to erode our freedom.

Getting rid of the dictator is only a first step in establishing a free society. The dictatorship must also be disassembled.

Two things form the bedrock of any open society - freedom of expression and rule of law. If you don't have those things, you don't have a free country.

The proper balance between individual liberty and central authority is a very ancient problem.

What if democracy does not serve liberty? This question is seldom asked in the West, where democracy is often seen as synonymous with liberalism.

Having spent all that time getting away from South Africa, running away from the army, I wanted very much to believe that America and England were actually as free as they were meant to be, not slipping rapidly into becoming police states like the one I'd just left.

National security is the first duty of government but we are also committed to reversing the substantial erosion of civil liberties.

Liberal democracy must finally become the vital element of our society.

We are in this business, whether it be intelligence or the government, to protect freedom, democracy and liberty, not to violate that.

The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power.

My message is that Democracy is not an alien invention. It is a way of solving problems in our society.

Let's face it: however old-fashioned and out of date and devaluated the word is, we like the way of living provided by democracy.

The "flatfoot mentality" insists that any individual or organization that wants to change anything in our present system is somehow subversive of "the American way," and should be under constant surveillance—a task that seems to absorb most of our resources for fighting genuine crime.

How far are we to go in pursuit of greater security at the cost of essential liberties?

Civil Rights Program is a farce and a sham – an effort to set up a police state in the guise of liberty.

A democratic society cannot tolerate mob rule.

The issue of wiretapping raises the issue of the balance between human liberty and the requirements of national security. I would say that the weight should be on the side of human liberty and that if human liberty is ever to be infringed, the demonstration on the national security side must be overwhelming.

Independently of its misdeeds, the mere power, — the bare existence of such a power, — is a thing irreconcilable with the nature and spirit of our institutions