Michael Scheuer Quotes

There’s always this struggle in a war between liberty and security … during war time we have these excesses and afterwards we apologize.

Freedom of movement is the very essence of our free society -- once the right to travel is curtailed, all other rights suffer.

Whenever you hear, “it’s for your own good” from the government, you are about to lose some money or freedom. Always!

America is so afraid of terror and terrorism to the point that they don't allow people to move around freely and see what they wish to see. I really wish to see the whole of America, if it is possible.

Freedom is when one hears the bell at seven o'clock in the morning and knows it is the milkman and not the Gestapo.

I mean, I'm not a, you know, a fraidy cat. I mean, I am truly concerned in this country that we are moving towards fascism.

Since 9/11 the United States has been followed by countries with bad records, such as the former Soviet Union countries, into erosions of human rights. Because the United States has changed its standards it is undermining civil liberties elsewhere.

I like to move around. I travel. I've driven across country by myself.

In this time when a citizenry applauds the liberation of a country as it lives in fear of its own freedom, when people all over the country fear reprisal if they use their right to free speech, it is time to get angry. It is time to get fierce.

The corporations that profit from permanent war need us to be afraid. Fear stops us from objecting to government spending on a bloated military. Fear means we will not ask unpleasant questions of those in power. Fear permits the government to operate in secret. Fear means we are willing to give up our rights and liberties for promises of security. The imposition of fear ensures that the corporations that wrecked the country cannot be challenged. Fear keeps us penned in like livestock.

Fear & complacency allow power to accumulate & liberty & privacy to suffer

[Marco] Rubio says we should collect all Americans' records all of the time. The Constitution says otherwise. I think they're both wrong. I think we defeat terrorism by showing them that we do not fear them.

If you ask someone whether our Constitutional rights are being flushed down the porcelain oubliette, and their response is, "If I answer that honestly they'll arrest me," then you already have your answer.

We have to decide whether our fear is going to get the better of us. Once upon a time we had a standard in our country that was 'innocent until proven guilty.' We've given up on so much. Now, people are talking about a standard that is 'if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.' Think about it. Is that the standard we're willing to live under?

In a democracy it is ultimately for us, the citizens, to judge where to place the balance between security and privacy, safety and liberty. It's our lives and liberties that are threatened, not only by terrorism but also by massive depredations of our privacy in the name of counter-terrorism. If those companies from which governments actually take most of our intimate details want to show that they are still on the side of the angels, they had better join this struggle for transparency too.

As soon as people become a little less fearful, they will also begin demanding more freedom.

Powers that be can't stay in control if you have everybody in love and in tune with each other and with the planet, and in tune with the electrons and the dark matter that's moving at the speed of light. That won't work in their interest. They gotta get you ready for your microchip.

Now I confess myself as belonging to that class in the country who contemplate slavery as a moral, social and political evil.

But in this country, while you have to be competent to pull off a terrorist attack, you don't have to be competent to cause terror. All you need to do is start plotting an attack and - regardless of whether or not you have a viable plan, weapons or even the faintest clue - the media will aid you in terrorizing the entire population.

This country to-day [is] the last stronghold of freedom, standing like a rock in a tide that is threatened to submerge the world.

When we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans, it was assumed that the Americans who had that freedom would use it responsibly.

We all move uneasily within our restraints.

I have searched all night and day for new and better words that could express my feelings and fear for the people of this country. I found no new words. I only have no hope-filled insight to deliver. I only have this warning to all Americans: Whatever this country is willing to do to the least of us, it will one day do to us all.

A country whose population has been trained to accept the government's word and to shun those who question it is a country without liberty in its future.

To blend, without coercion, the individual good and the common good is the essence of citizenship in a free country.