Julian Assange Quotes

I think Assange has been very courageous. I've also defended Bradley Manning. I think they've been tremendously courageous in telling the truth, and the public has the right to the truth.

Wikileaks is providing information on what ambassadors are sending to Washington and things like that. Maybe some of that has a right to some kind of secrecy, but there is a heavy burden and I think its pretty hard to meet. I haven't read everything from Wikileaks by any means but the parts that I have read and seen I think are things the public should know.

Those of us who believe in human rights and the truth - particularly the journalists and the media - should stand in defense of Julian Assange and Bradley Manning. We owe them a lot for telling us the truth of what is happening in our world, and that is why I would continue to support them.

Our democratic values also include - and our national security demands - open and transparent government. Some information obviously needs to be protected. And since his first days in office, President Obama has worked to strike the proper balance between the security the American people deserve and the openness our democratic society expects.

Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, has on several occasions talked about transparency as an absolute principle. I don't personally believe that.

The work of WikiLeaks is with principal documentary evidence; that's where the truth lies. It gets to the heart of the matter. It educates people and in turn empowers them.

Let's face it: WikiLeaks exists because the mainstream media haven't done their job.

In the history of Wikileaks, nobody has claimed that the material being put out is not authentic.

I don't think that any government has a right to subvert the truth or to cover up the truth, and all I see WikiLeaks doing is exposing the truth.

Why does the White House sometimes seem so determined to close the door on the people's right to know what their government is doing?

Open government’ must not be sacrificed on the altar of bureaucratic secrecy.

“Activist” is a dirty word in the United States. We are not activists for any particular political position on most issues. We are activists only for ending government secrecy.

Most leaks from large bureaucracies are “good” leaks: no danger to national security, no harm to innocent people, information the public ought to know.

WikiLeaks serves as a back-up for those who want to tell the truth about the inner workings of government when the mainstream media is not willing or taking too long to publish.

I think we do sympathize. And a lot of us think a lot of what Snowden did was great, and you're abetting him. But, we also think, well, if we are going to have someone who is going to be the one to take secret materials and disseminate it...why you? You weren't elected to that post. That seems to be what the question always comes down to.

Secrecy and a free, democratic government don't mix.

Before the Freedom of Information Act, I used to say at meetings "The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer." [...] But since the Freedom of Information Act, I'm afraid to say things like that.

Wikileaks has - we specialize in bringing the First Amendment to the world, and we were always very surprised one of our biggest battles would be trying to bring it to the United States under an Obama administration.

I always believed that WikiLeaks as a concept would perform a global role, and to some degree it was clear that it was doing that as far back as 2007 when it changed the result of the Kenyan general election.

In Washington, the accepted method for passing along information about how the government fails to meet real-world needs is to leak it.

There are many people, including me, who admire the original mission of WikiLeaks.

The U.K. government has a responsibility to keep secrets in some circumstances. It also has a responsibility not to abuse that power for other purposes.

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.

Any unveiling is also veiling. No matter how transparent our governments want to be, governments will be selectively transparent.

It is beyond dispute that President Obama and his aides have an extreme, even unprecedented obsession with concealing embarrassing information, controlling the flow of information, and punishing anyone who stands in the way. But, at least theoretically speaking, it is the job of journalists to impede that effort, not to serve and enable it.