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.
Interpretation
Knowledge empowers individuals to take control of their own lives.
This quote from Julian Assange emphasizes the importance of being well-informed and educated as a way to maintain autonomy and avoid being dominated by others. It suggests that ignorance leads to dependence on those who may manipulate or control without the benefit of the ignorant individual's consent or understanding.
In practice
In a speech about education reform, one could say, 'As Julian Assange pointed out, we must choose to be informed citizens rather than depend on others.'
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.
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 collecting about all of us vastly exceeded the public imagination.
Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence and thereby eventually lose all ability to defend ourselves and those we love.
The internet, our greatest tool of emancipation, has been transformed into the most dangerous facilitator of totalitarianism we have ever seen. The internet is a threat to human civilization.
Every thought that you have impacts you. Shift from a thought that weakens to one that strengthens you.
Whenever I was upset by something in the papers, [Jack] always told me to be more tolerant, like a horse flicking away flies in the summer.
People often confuse a growth mindset with being flexible or open-minded or with having a positive outlook - qualities they believe they've simply always had. My colleagues and I call this a false growth mindset.
I pray before I go into the operating room for every case, and I ask him to give me wisdom, to help me to know what to do - and not only for operating, but for everything.
Years ago, when he was around fourteen, he'd been all hipped on the idea of going to India. He read books about people sitting on rocks, naked, in all kinds of weather, but mostly bad, naturally, and walking barefoot through hot coals and arriving at wisdom. I used to say that it sounded to me as though they were getting away from wisdom as fast as they could. I think he sort of looked down on me for that.
All your strength is in union, all your danger is in discord.
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