In my role as Wikileaks editor, I’ve been involved in fighting off many legal attacks. To do that, and keep our sources safe, we have had to spread assets, encrypt everything, and move telecommunications and...

The supply of leaks is very large. It’s helpful for us to have more people in this industry. It’s protective to us.

Knowledge has always flowed upwards to bishops and kings, not down to serfs and slaves.

Journalists always like an excuse for why are they talking about something now when they didn’t talk about something a week ago. They always like to say something is new.

One of the best ways to achieve justice is to expose injustice.

I found in investigative journalism it is always best, if you have any language skills, not to admit them.

True information does good.

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...

To keep a person ignorant is to place them in a cage.

Although I still write, research and investigate, my role is primarily that of a publisher and editor-in-chief who organises and directs other journalists.

We get information in the mail, the regular postal mail, encrypted or not, vet it like a regular news organization, format it – which is sometimes something that’s quite hard to do, when you’re talking...

I had had a lot of experience in bringing the Internet to Australia, and I saw that knowledge in the hands of people achieves reform.

The penetration of society by the Internet and the penetration of the Internet by society is the best thing that has ever happened to global human civilisation.

We don’t have sources who are dissidents on other sources. Should they come forward, that would be a tricky situation for us. But we’re presumably acting in such a way that people feel morally compelled...

These big-package releases. There should be a cute name for them.

Every law, every constitution, every regulative decision is based upon what people are discussing in their community. It’s based upon our sum knowledge of history and the present.

The greater the power, the more need there is for transparency, because if the power is abused, the result can be so enormous. On the other hand, those people who do not have power, we...

You can’t do anything sensible until you know what the situation is that you’re in.

WikiLeaks is designed to make capitalism more free and ethical.

We like to engage in a normal publishing effort, which is to act in a responsible manner and make sure the material is not likely to harm anyone, that it is properly investigated by quality...

The internet has become a political space. I think that is one of the most important developments in the past decade.

We always expect tremendous criticism. It is my role to be the lightning rod … to attract the attacks against the organization for our work, and that is a difficult role. On the other hand,...

I coauthored my first nonfiction book by the time I was 25. I have been involved in nonfiction documentaries, newspapers, TV and internet since that time.

Cryptography is the essential building block of independence for organisations on the Internet, just like armies are the essential building blocks of states, because otherwise one state just takes over another.

During the period of house arrest, I had an electronic manacle around my leg for 24 hours a day, and for someone who has tried to give others liberty all their adult life, that is...

That’s a problem. I mean, like any sort of growing startup organization, we are sort of overwhelmed by our growth. And that means we’re getting enormous quantity of whistleblower disclosures of a very high caliber,...

I’m not a big fan of regulation: anyone who likes freedom of the press can’t be.

Cryptography is the ultimate form of non-violent direct action.

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

Opponents past and present have the same essential weakness about them: first they want to use you, then they want to be you, then they want to snuff you out.

You can either be informed and your own rulers, or you can be ignorant and have someone else, who is not ignorant, rule over you.

We have a way of dealing with information that has sort of personal – personally identifying information in it. But there are legitimate secrets – you know, your records with your doctor; that’s a legitimate...

As we’ve gotten more successful, there’s a gap between the speed of our publishing pipeline and the speed of our receiving submissions pipeline. Our pipeline of leaks has been increasing exponentially as our profile rises,...

We have to be careful about applying criminal labels to people until we’re very sure.

Reality is an aspect of property. It must be seized. And investigative journalism is the noble art of seizing reality back from the powerful.

The Iraq War was the biggest issue for people of my generation in the West. It was also the clearest case, in my living memory, of media manipulation and the creation of a war through...

You have to start with the truth. The truth is the only way that we can get anywhere. Because any decision-making that is based upon lies or ignorance can’t lead to a good conclusion.

The corruption in reporting starts very early. It’s like the police reporting on the police.

Well, there’s a question as to what sort of information is important in the world, what sort of information can achieve reform. And there’s a lot of information. So information that organizations are spending economic...

To be alive as a human being is to know, in the same way as it is to have a heart that beats.

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...

Power is a thing of perception. They don’t need to be able to kill you. They just need you to think they are able to kill you

It’s interesting that Swiss banks also hide their assets from the Swiss by using offshore bank structuring.

Google’s colourful, playful logo is imprinted on human retinas just under six billion times each day, 2.1 trillion times a year – an opportunity for respondent conditioning enjoyed by no other company in history.

If journalism is good, it is controversial, by its nature.

Stopping leaks is a new form of censorship.

It is the role of good journalism to take on powerful abusers, and when powerful abusers are taken on, there’s always a bad reaction. So we see that controversy, and we believe that is a...

My family has had to move and change their name and have been subject to threats from right wing blogs calling for my son, for example, to be killed to get at me.

Courage is not the absence of fear. Only fools have no fear. Rather, courage is the intellectual mastery of fear by understanding the true risks and opportunities of the situation and keeping those things in...

All over the world, the barriers between what is inside an organisation and outside an organisation are being smoothed out. In the military, the use of contractors means that what is the military and what...