Laura > Laura's Quotes

“The freedom of a country can only be measured by its respect for the rights of its citizens, and it's my conviction that these rights are in fact limitations of state power that define exactly where and when a government may not infringe into that domain of personal or individual freedoms that during the American Revolution was called "liberty" and during the Internet Revolution is called "privacy.”
― Edward Snowden, Permanent Record

“What I am saying is that only when you give up on the fantasy of moral authority can you approach any problem without doing more harm than good.”
― Seth Fried, The Municipalists

“Some cynical Frenchman has said that there are two parties to a love-transaction: the one who loves and the other who condescends to be so treated.”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

“After everything, what it all means is that if one day we slip in the bathroom and crack our head on the toilet, our last thoughts can be a satisfied, 'Well, I and only I did this to myself.”
― John Scalzi, Redshirts

“Your freedom it says. What is that? Some kind of illusory concept where the people in charge let you have comfortable distractions. Enough THINGS so that you don't see your chains. I respect your work too much to let you endure that kind of self-deception.”
― Jonathan Hickman, The Manhattan Projects #2

“I like you when you're algebraic," said Ulf--and immediately regretted it. It was a flirtatious remark--describing somebody as algebraic was undoubtedly to cross a line. You would not normally describe an ordinary friend as algebraic, and then say that you liked her that way.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Department of Sensitive Crimes

“He thought of all the ways that so many people felt about life. Life was a matter of regret--how could it be anything else? We knew that we would lose the things we loved; we knew that sooner or later we would lose everything, and beyond that was a darkness, a state of non-being that we found hard to imagine, let alone accept.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Department of Sensitive Crimes

“But for one brief and beautiful stretch of time—a stretch that, fortunately for me, coincided almost exactly with my adolescence—the Internet was mostly made of, by, and for the people.”
― Edward Snowden, Permanent Record

“Two things about the NSA stunned me right off the bat: how technologically sophisticated it was compared with the CIA, and how much less vigilant it was about security in its every iteration, from the compartmentalization of information to data encryption.”
― Edward Snowden

“Ultimately, arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say.”
― Edward Snowden

“Under observation, we act less free, which means we effectively are less free.”
― Edward Snowden

“We'd do well to remember that at the end of the day, the law doesn't defend us; we defend the law. And when it becomes contrary to our morals, we have both the right and the responsibility to rebalance it toward just ends.”
― Edward Snowden

“Ultimately, if people lose their willingness to recognize that there are times in our history when legality becomes distinct from morality, we aren't just ceding control of our rights to government, but our agency in determining our futures.”
― Edward Snowden

“How smooth must be the language of the whites, when they can make right look like wrong, and wrong like right.”
― Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak (Black Hawk)

“I surveyed the country that had cost us so much trouble, anxiety and blood, and that now caused me to be a prisoner of war. I reflected upon the ingratitude of the whites when I saw their fine houses, rich harvests and everything desirable around them; and
recollected that all this land had been ours, for which I and my people had never received a dollar, and that the whites were not satisfied until they took our village and our graveyards from us and removed us
across the Mississippi.”
― Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak (Black Hawk)

“The function of criticism should not be confused with the function of reform.”
― Roger Zelazny, My Name is Legion

“It was as if all the pain in the world had found a voice. Yet I had known such pain was in the next room, and had it been dumb, I believe - I have thought since - I could have stood it well enough. It is when suffering finds a voice and sets our nerves quivering that this pity comes troubling us.”
― H. G. Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau : The Sleeper Awakes