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.
Sometimes I feel like a figment of my own imagination.
... let everyone regard himself as the steward of God in all things which he possesses.
Money, like vodka, turns a person into an eccentric.
When considering the truth of a proposition, one is either engaged in an honest appraisal of the evidence and logical arguments, or one isn't. Religion is one area of our lives where people imagine that some other standard of intellectual integrity applies.
The secret of life is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of the day for the rest of your life. And the most important thing is, it must be something you cannot possibly do.
Water, like many other resources, is harvested, transported and used throughout all aspects of society. Unlike other resources, water is critical to the survival of all forms of life. The underlying question that sits at the core of my exploration is to what degree can we shape water before it begins to shape us.
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