Quotes from Edward Snowden

Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American, and the more panicked talk we hear from people like him... the better off we all are.

I carefully evaluated every single document I disclosed to ensure that each was legitimately in the public interest. There are all sorts of documents that would have made a big impact that I didn't turn over, because harming people isn't my goal. Transparency is.

The US government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me. Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped.

Citizens have to fight suppression of information on matters of vital public importance. To tell the truth is not a crime.

I love my country. I love my family. And I have dedicated my life to both of them.

The NSA and Israel wrote Stuxnet together.

I grew up with the understanding that the world I lived in was one where people enjoyed a sort of freedom to communicate with each other in privacy, without it being monitored, without it being measured or analyzed or sort of judged by these shadowy figures or systems, any time they mention anything that travels across public lines.

When people say, 'Why don't you face the music?' I say, 'You have to understand the music is not an open court and a fair trial.'

Privacy matters; privacy is what allows us to determine who we are and who we want to be.

Because, remember, I didn't want to change society. I wanted to give society a chance to determine if it should change itself.

My intention is to ask the courts and people of Hong Kong to decide my fate.

Sometimes to do the right thing, you have to break a law. And the key there is in terms of civil disobedience. You have to make sure that what you're risking, what you're bringing onto yourself, does not serve as a detriment to anyone else. It doesn't hurt anybody else.

All I can say right now is the U.S. government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me. Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped.

We have to confront the reality of our world, and make the hard decisions about which way we want to move forward.

I don't go out and play football and stuff - that's not me. I want to think, I want to build, I want to talk, I want to create.

You can't come up against the world's most powerful intelligence agencies and not accept the risk. If they want to get you, over time they will.

Who I am really doesn't matter at all. If I'm the worst person in the world, you can hate me and move on. What really matters here are the issues. What really matters here is the kind of government we want, the kind of Internet we want, the kind of relationship between people and societies.

My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them.

Sometimes the scandal is not what law was broken, but what the law allows.

For me, in terms of personal satisfaction, the mission's already accomplished. I already won. As soon as the journalists were able to work, everything that I had been trying to do was validated. Because, remember, I didn't want to change society. I wanted to give society a chance to determine if it should change itself.

The immoral cannot be made moral through the use of secret law.

We have seen enough criminality on the part of government. It is hypocritical to make this allegation against me. They have narrowed the public sphere of influence.

I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions.

Ask yourself: if I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn't I have flown directly into Beijing? I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now.