Quotes from Julian Assange

People love WikiLeaks when it is exposing corruption in their opponents. People oppose WikiLeaks when it is exposing corruption or dangerous behavior in themselves.

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

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 revelations from this material continue to come out. We have approximately 2,000 cables into 250,000.

WikiLeaks is a source protection organization. We are famous for never having exposed one of our sources over 10 years. That's why sources trust us and they come to us.

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.

Whistleblowers often take very significant efforts to bring us material and often at very significant risks.

True information does good.

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.

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 hard to see.

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 mustn't reduce their power even more by making them yet more transparent.

If we are to produce a more civilized society, a more just society, it has to be based on the truth.

The truth is the only way that we can get anywhere.

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

I would be happy to accept asylum, political asylum, in India — a nation I love. In return, I will bring Mayawati a range of the finest British footwear.

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

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

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 about giant databases of information - release it to the public and then defend ourselves against the inevitable legal and political attacks.

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 hard to see.

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 people around the world to activate protective laws in different national jurisdictions.

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 get undue credit.

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.

I believe that the way to justice is education.

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

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 to continue our mission, not to screw it up.