Quotes About Freedom Of Information

#1. National security is the fig leaf against freedom of information.

Ralph Nader

#2. If you live in a democracy and don't have freedom of information, it's not a democracy. And people have to understand that if you don't have freedom of information online, it's not going to be offline, either.

Birgitta Jonsdottir

#3. 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.

Henry A. Kissinger

#4. The First Amendment is not a blanket freedom-of-information act. The constitutional newsgathering freedom means the media can go where the public can, but enjoys no superior right of access.

George Will

#5. So long as the investigation is still open, Gunnels explains, there is no way to request documents pertaining to the case through the Freedom of Information Act. "That investigation will probably stay open a long time," he says.

Matt Taibbi

#6. I'm a freedom of information campaigner, so obviously I support the cause of Wikileaks.

Heather Brooke

#7. Several years later, after the Freedom of Information Act was passed, it was revealed that Cotton had been working undercover for the police.

Assata Shakur

#8. I'm getting hassled by a couple of people to release the CRU station temperature data. Don't any of you three tell anybody that the UK has a Freedom of Information Act.

Phil Jones

#9. I am in favor of complete freedom of information and of free access to the new communication tools, in particular the Internet.

Omar Bongo

#10. The information I requested under the Freedom of Information Act has been blocked for two years.

Sibel Edmonds

#11. [The Freedom of Information Act is] the Taj Mahal of the Doctrine of Unanticipated Consequences, the Sistine Chapel of Cost-Benefit Analysis Ignored.

Antonin Scalia

#12. Press releases tell us when federal agencies do something right, but the Freedom of Information Act lets us know when they do not.

Patrick Leahy

#13. If Anonymous and Lulzsec are the id of hacking, then physical hackerspaces are the heart of the higher-minded hacking ideals: freedom of information, meritocracy of ideas, a joy of learning and anti-authoritarianism.

Heather Brooke

#14. But in the first Gulf war the United Kingdom was not under any threat from Iraq, and is still less so in the second one. Then there is no justification for obstructing freedom of information, particularly as nations have a right to know what their soldiers are being used for.

Kate Adie

#15. I well remember how the thoughts I had up to the time of my discharge from the jail on every occasion were modified immediately after discharge, and after getting first-hand information myself. Somehow or other the jail atmosphere does not allow you to have all the bearings in your mind.

Mahatma Gandhi

#16. The worst form of snobbery is to deny information; to anyone at all. Always remember that. Bas as it is to look down on another human being: to act as censor? Unforgivable.

Matthew Blakstad

#17. Free yourself from the expectations of having to be right with the wrong information.

Linda Deir

#18. Thoughts, words, ideas and information, free from any bonds or restrictions, is the very concrete which pours out a foundation strong enough that upon which a house, stable and lasting, of true freedom and liberty may be built.

Derek R. Audette

#19. After Secretary Clinton announced in January 2010 that Internet freedom would be a major pillar of U.S. foreign policy, the State Department decided to take what Clinton calls a 'venture capital' approach to the funding of tools, research, public information projects, and training.

Rebecca MacKinnon

#20. Human freedom increasingly depends on who controls what we know and, therefore, how we understand our world. It depends on what information we are able to create and disseminate: what we can share, how we can share it, and with whom we can share it.

Rebecca MacKinnon

#21. None of us here in Washington knows all or even half of the answers ... If you love your country, don't depend on handouts from Washington for your information. If you cherish your freedom, don't leave it all up to big government.

Barry Goldwater

#22. People's abuse through journalism should not be taken us freedom of press.

Auliq Ice

#23. The bigger the information media, the less courage and freedom they follow. Bigness means weakness.

Eric Sevareid

#24. Next time you open the paper, and you see an intellectual property decision, a telecoms decision, it's not about something small and technical. It is about the future of the freedom to be as social beings with each other, and the way information, knowledge and culture will be produced.

Yochai Benkler

#25. Just look at us. Everything is backwards, everything is upside down. Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, psychiatrists destroy minds, scientists destroy truth, major media destroys information, religions destroy spirituality and governments destroy freedom.

Michael Ellner

#26. But libraries are about freedom. Freedom to read, freedom of ideas, freedom of communication. They are about education (which is not a process that finishes the day we leave school or university), about entertainment, about making safe spaces, and about access to information.

Neil Gaiman

#27. There are considerable advantages to using many degrees of freedom to store information, stability and controllability being perhaps the most important.

Seth Lloyd

#28. The USA FREEDOM Act ends the NSA's unfettered data collection program once and for all, while at the same time preserving the government's ability to obtain information to track down terrorists when it has sufficient justification and support for doing so.

Ted Cruz

#29. Not many years ago, it was access to information and movement that seemed our greatest luxury; nowadays it's often freedom from information, the chance to sit still, that feels like the ultimate prize.

Pico Iyer

#30. The information of the people at large can alone make them the safe as they are the sole depositary of our political and religious freedom.

Thomas Jefferson

#31. The dark net is a world of power and freedom: of expression, of creativity, of information, of ideas. Power and freedom endow our creative and our destructive faculties. The dark net magnifies both, making it easier to explore every desire, to act on every dark impulse, to indulge every neurosis.

Jamie Bartlett

#32. I think future generations will see the invention of the Internet as having been as important as the invention of the printing press. It's the democratizing tool of all tools. As long as no one can control the flow of information, then freedom always has a chance.

Marianne Williamson

#33. Access to information and freedom of access to it may seem like a fundamental right but there are many people who think, rightly or wrongly, it is for your own good that it is hidden.

Alberto Gonzales

#34. The First Amendment does not guarantee the press a constitutional right of special access to information not available to the general public, nor does it cloak the inmate with special rights of freedom of speech.

Pete Wilson

#35. We now live in a nation where doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, governments destroy freedom, the press destroys information, religion destroys morals, and our banks destroy the economy.

Chris Hedges

#36. Information is nutrition, knowledge is nutrition, art is nutrition and they set us free. Internet is a great library, great library is a freedom within wisdom in this digital age

Baris Gencel

#37. Ignorance may be bliss, but it certainly is not freedom, except in the minds of those who prefer darkness to light and chains to liberty. The more true information we can acquire, the better for our enfranchisement.

Robert Hugh Benson

#38. Can we get control of an individual to the point where he will do our bidding against his will and even against fundamental laws of nature such as self preservation? (CIA Document, Project ARTICHOKE, MORI ID 144686, 1952)
As cited by Dr Ellen P. Lacter, p57

Orit Badouk Epstein

#39. In order to improve the condition of mankind all men must be given the certainty of security through the exchange of safeguards, the assurance of prosperity through an exchange of resources, the reality of freedom through the free movement of information, persons and ideas.

Antoine Pinay

#40. When you give false information you tend to restrict the freedom of choice to others.

Randal Marlin

#41. Study the scriptures and study the mortals who have been most consistently accurate about the most important things. When your freedom and your eternal welfare are at stake, your information best be accurate.

Ezra Taft Benson