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.
Interpretation
Power should come with transparency to prevent abuse, but transparency shouldn't diminish those without power.
Julian Assange emphasizes the need for transparency as a safeguard against the potential abuse of power. He suggests that while those in power must be held accountable through transparency, we must also be cautious not to strip away the agency of those who lack power by demanding excessive scrutiny of their actions or privacy, which can lead to further oppression.
In practice
In a discussion about government surveillance, one might quote Assange to highlight the balance needed between transparency and personal privacy.
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.
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.
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.
We are condemned to kill time, thus we die bit by bit.
It is my idea to make capitalism create socialism in China so that these two economic forces of human evolution will work side by side in future civilization.
I have a different idea of a universal. It is of a universal rich with all that is particular, rich with all the particulars there are, the deepening of each particular, the coexistence of them all.
Alms are an inheritance and a justice which is due to the poor and which Jesus has levied upon us.
A good parson once said that where mystery begins religion ends. Cannot I say, as truly at least, of human laws, that where mystery begins justice ends?
Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.