I think the most important idea is to remember that there have been times throughout American history where what is right is not the same as what is legal.
Edward SnowdenRead
It's important that we elevate and primarily focus on the rights of American citizens, but it's also important that we don't forget, 95 percent of the world's population lives beyond our own borders.
Interpretation
What this quote means
We should prioritize the rights of our citizens while recognizing our global responsibility.
Edward Snowden highlights the dual responsibility of acknowledging the rights of American citizens and being aware of the global context, where a vast majority of the world's population lives outside the United States. This quote urges us to balance our national interests with a broader understanding of humanity and the rights of people everywhere.
Themes
RightsCitizenshipGlobalResponsibilityPopulation
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about immigration policy, this quote emphasizes our need to consider global human rights.
More from Edward Snowden
All quotes →Congress hasn't declared war on the countries - the majority of them are our allies - but without asking for public permission, NSA is running network operations against them that affect millions of innocent people. And for what? So we can have secret access to a computer in a country we're not even fighting?
Edward SnowdenRead
A child born today will grow up with no conception of privacy at all.
Edward SnowdenRead
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.
Edward SnowdenRead
I don't see myself as a hero because what I'm doing is self-interested: I don't want to live in a world where there's no privacy and therefore no room for intellectual exploration and creativity.
Edward SnowdenRead
I care more about the country than what happens to me. But we can't allow the law to become a political weapon or agree to scare people away from standing up for their rights, no matter how good the deal. I'm not going to be part of that.
Edward SnowdenRead
Similar quotes
It's the job of intellectuals and writers to cast doubt on perfection.
Antonio TabucchiRead
The greatest country, the richest country, is not that which has the most capitalists, monopolists, immense grabbings, vast fortunes, with its sad, sad soil of extreme, degrading, damning poverty, but the land in which there are the most homesteads, freeholds - where wealth does not show such contrasts high and low, where all men have enough - a modest living- and no man is made possessor beyond the sane and beautiful necessities.
Walt WhitmanRead
Any pleasure that does no harm to other people is to be valued.
Bertrand RussellRead
One of life's quiet excitements is to stand somewhat apart from yourself and watch yourself softly becoming the author of something beautiful even if it is only a floating ash.
Norman MacleanRead
Shrines! Shrines! Surely you don't believe in the gods. What's your argument? Where's your proof?
AristophanesRead
I am afraid, ... that health begins, after seventy, and often long before, to have a meaning different from that which it had at thirty. But it is culpable to murmur at the established order of the creation, as it is vain to oppose it. He that lives, must grow old; and he that would rather grow old than die, has God to thank for the infirmities of old age.
Lyndon B. JohnsonRead