Quotes from Toomas Hendrik Ilves

People have actually figured out that Estonia is one of the few post-Communist countries that has a genuine image in people's minds as being something.

Liberal democracies do not and often cannot respond in kind to cyberattacks on their own way of governance.

The thing people forget is that the entire world - or, at least, Europe, U.S., transatlantic, Russia, Soviet Union - that security architecture has been in place since 1945 and has been refined. Already, the U.N. charter that everyone signed is that you can't change borders through use of force or even threat of use of force.

Because of cyberattacks and fake news, we can already imagine the problem all democratic societies will face in future elections: how to limit lies when they threaten democracy?

In Germany, a country that for obvious reasons is far more attuned than most to the dangers of demagogy, populism, and nationalism, lawmakers have already proposed taking legal measures against fake news. When populist, nationalist fake news threatens the liberal democratic center, other Europeans may follow suit.

I was the child of refugees.

When Estonia reestablished its sovereignty after a half century of successive thuggish, totalitarian, foreign occupations by the Soviets, the Nazis, and then again the Soviets, we knew we wanted to create a democratic country characterized by rule of law and respect for human rights.

In cyberwarfare, it is much harder to identify the attacker and, therefore, to know how to retaliate.

If getting young people computer-literate through putting school systems online is a no-brainer, at least in retrospect, getting older people and those in rural areas online can be a tougher nut to crack.

There is no Baltic identity with a common culture, language group, religious tradition.

Democracy is messy, clearly, but it has one key factor, which is an orderly transfer of power.

Generally, people's fear and hesitancy regarding greater computerization comes from a George Orwell/'1984'-based metaphor of a single computer or data base where all your information is stored, knows everything about you, and can use this information at will and for evil purposes.

We Estonians will do what is necessary to join the European Union.

The problem of online identity is expressed best in an old 'New Yorker' cartoon with a picture of a dog next to a computer, and the dog says, 'No one online knows you're a dog.'

That was something that shaped my thinking regarding Estonia: the idea that we should be getting our young people to work with computers.

Social media has become a primary factor in political campaigns.

George Bush and I share a love of steel brush cutters. It turns out we use the same professional brush cutter. He asked me what I did. I said I cut brush. He says, 'Oh, what do you use?' I said steel. He goes, 'Oh, me too.'

In Russia, tweeting or sharing real news that's embarrassing to the regime can land you in prison. Imagine, then, the response of the regime to 'fake news' that's damaging to the Kremlin.

There was a period in my life when I was very young that I wrote a sonnet a day just to learn concision in writing.

I remember starting to read about the Soviet Union when I was eight years old; I think I was reading my father's 'New York Times.'

The Russian Federation's practice of instant citizenship, whereby Russian passports are distributed willy-nilly to ethnic Russians abroad so they can be 'protected' in their current homeland, is unacceptable. Passports are travel documents, not a tool to justify aggression.

The first time cyber was even a panel discussion at the Munich Security Conference, which is - I mean, we've got hundreds of specialists there - was 2011. That's how long it took.

People who come out of the liberal arts don't have an understanding of science and technology, and the people in science and technology have very little experience with liberal arts and the traditions of a liberal democracy.

I knew who Bruce Springsteen was before he had his first record.