"In a world without cash (a bearer and peer-to-peer form of money) all transactions must be necessarily intermediated by financial institutions. Intermediated transactions are by their nature subject to surveillance and control." — Jerry Brito (The Case for Electronic Cash, 2019) #cash #surveillance #control #intermediation

"I don't want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded. That is not something I am willing to support or live under." — Edward Snowden (The Guardian Interview, 2013) #surveillance #privacy #freedom

"I never understood the classical notion of a key distribution center, which is a trusted resource that you have to share." — Whitfield Diffie (ITAS Interview, 1992) #cryptography #trust

"I'd like to think that decades from now, people will look back and see this time as the dawning of a new era of individual empowerment and freedom." — Hal Finney (BitcoinTalk Forum, 2013) #bitcoin #freedom

"There is a war going on between those who would liberate crypto and those who would suppress it. The seemingly innocuous bunch strewn around this conference room represents the vanguard of the pro-crypto forces." — Steven Levy (Crypto Rebels (WIRED), 1993) #cryptography #cypherpunk #resistance #government

"The law enforcement folks were stuck longer in the hard-core phase, and still are, even now using Bin Laden to suggest that crypto has GONE TOO FAR, damn it." — Steven Levy (The WELL - Crypto Discussion, 2001) #lawenforcement #cryptography #government #terrorism

"Somebody had to be the first one to start banging on the Berlin Wall, with a sledgehammer, in 1989. Somebody had to be the first to walk through. Somebody had to be the first to stand up and say, 'Enough!'" — Jim Bell (Assassination Politics, 1997) #resistance #freedom

"Efforts to influence the government (e.g., lobbying and propaganda) are important only in so far as to delay its attempted crackdown long enough for the technology to mature and come into wide use." — Wei Dai (Cypherpunks mailing list, 1995) #lobbying

"Cash is also pretty good for privacy because there's no camera that can capture every movement of a dollar bill every time it moves; it just wouldn't work." — Peter Valkenburgh (Your Secret Right to Cash, 2017) #cash #privacy #surveillance #technology

"Cryptography rearranges power: it configures who can do what, from what. This makes cryptography an inherently political tool, and it confers on the field an intrinsically moral dimension." — Phillip Rogaway (The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work, 2015) #cryptography #politics

"Be interested in liberty and the freedom to transact and speak to get back to the original motivations. Don't spend time trying to make government-friendly financial alternatives." — Tim May (CoinDesk, 2018) #liberty #freedom #transactions #government

"There has never been a government that didn't sooner or later try to reduce the freedom of its subjects and gain more control over them, and there probably never will be one." — Wei Dai (Cypherpunks mailing list, 1995) #freedom #cypherpunk

"Bitcoin is a tool of resistance gifted to us by Satoshi. The idea has escaped and the idea of cryptocurrency will not be stopped." — Amir Taaki (The libbitcoin Manifesto, 2013) #bitcoin #resistance #cryptocurrency #freedom

"Money, like written language, was one of the most important inventions of civilization." — Nick Szabo (Shelling Out: The Origins of Money, 2002) #money #civilization #history

"The internet, our greatest tool of emancipation, has been transformed into the most dangerous facilitator of totalitarianism we have ever seen." — Julian Assange (Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet, 2012) #internet #surveillance #totalitarianism

"Talk is cheap. Show me the code." — Linus Torvalds (Linux Kernel Mailing List, 2000) #code #opensource

"Withdrawing into technology is like pulling the blankets over your head. It feels good for a while, until reality catches up. The next Clipper or Digital Telephony proposal will provide a rude awakening." — Hal Finney (Politics vs Technology, 1994) #politics #warning

"Proprietary software is an injustice. It denies users freedom and keeps them divided and helpless." — Richard Stallman (Free Software, Free Society, 2002) #proprietarysoftware #freedom

"Digital pseudonyms, the creation of persistent network personas that cannot be forged by others and yet which are unlinkable to the 'true names' of their owners, are finding major uses in ensuring free speech, in allowing controversial opinions to be aired, and in providing for economic transactions that cannot be blocked by local governments." — Tim May (Crypto Anarchy and Virtual Communities, 1994) #freespeech #anonymity #economics

"I am fascinated by Tim May's crypto-anarchy. Unlike the communities traditionally associated with the word 'anarchy', in a crypto-anarchy the government is not temporarily destroyed but permanently forbidden and permanently unnecessary." — Wei Dai (b-money proposal, 1998) #cryptoanarchy #bmoney #governance