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.
Edward SnowdenRead
Bathtub falls and police officers kill more Americans than terrorism, yet we've been asked to sacrifice our most sacred rights for fear of falling victim to it.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the irony of sacrificing freedoms for security against a rare threat while ignoring more common dangers.
Edward Snowden's quote provocatively critiques the societal response to terrorism versus other mundane yet lethal risks, such as accidents and law enforcement actions. It underscores the paradox of prioritizing security measures that infringe on civil liberties in response to an unlikely threat, while larger and more immediate dangers are often overlooked or normalized. This commentary prompts reflection on how fear can skew our perceptions of danger and the importance of preserving fundamental rights in the face of such fears.
Themes
FreedomTerrorismSacrificesRightsSafety
In practice
Example use cases
In a debate about civil liberties and national security, one might reference this quote to emphasize the need to question the trade-offs we make.
More from Edward Snowden
All quotes βI 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.
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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?
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A child born today will grow up with no conception of privacy at all.
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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
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