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...

Intelligence agencies keep things secret because they often violate the rule of law or of good behavior.

Well, I mean, the real attack on truth is tabloid journalism in the United States.

Wikileaks is a mechanism to maximize the flow of information to maximize the amount of action leading to just reform.

What is the possible benefit? Can this material save lives? Can it improve the quality of life in Iraq? Can it tend to shape our perceptions of how war should and should not be conducted?...

Capable, generous men do not create victims, they nurture victims.

We released 400,000 classified documents, the most extraordinary history of a war to ever have been released in our civilization. Those documents cover 109,000 deaths. That is serious matter.

I saw that publishing all over the world was deeply constrained by self-censorship, economics and political censorship, while the military-industrial complex was growing at a tremendous rate, and the amount of information that it was...

Through the confessional system, the Catholic church spied upon the lives of its congregants. While Latin mass excluded most people who could not speak Latin from an understanding of the very system of thought that...

We have some material on spying by a major government on the tech industry. Industrial espionage.

When Enron collapsed, through court processes, thousands and thousands of emails came out that were internal, and it provided a window into how the whole company was managed. It was all the little decisions that...

The sense of perspective that interaction with multiple cultures gives you I find to be extremely valuable, because it allows you to see the structure of a country with greater clarity, and gives you a...

Cablegate is 3,000 volumes of material. It is the greatest intellectual treasure to have entered into the public record in modern times.

When it comes to the point where you occasionally look forward to being in prison on the basis that you might be able to spend a day reading a book, the realization dawns that perhaps...

These megaleaks… They’re an important phenomenon, and they’re only going to increase.

I mean there’s enormous pressures to harmonize freedom of speech legislation and transparency legislation around the world – within the E.U., between China and the United States. Which way is it going to go? It’s...

Journalism should be more like science. As far as possible, facts should be verifiable. If journalists want long-term credibility for their profession, they have to go in that direction. Have more respect for readers.