"A phase change is coming. Virtual communities are in their ascendancy, displacing conventional notions of nationhood. Geographic proximity is no longer as important as it once was." — Tim May (Crypto Anarchy and Virtual Communities, 1994)

"Public key cryptography is a revolution that puts control of privacy into the hands of the individual." — Whitfield Diffie (New Directions in Cryptography, 1976) #cryptography #publickey #privacy

"You can pay for access to a database, download a program, or have a prescription filled — without anyone being able to trace the transaction back to you." — David Chaum (Security Without Identification, 1985) #privacy #transactions #anonymity

"That cryptographic work is deeply tied to politics is a claim so obvious that only a cryptographer could fail to see it." — Phillip Rogaway (The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work, 2015) #cryptography #politics

"I believed in the idea of giving people the freedom to buy and sell and connect with each other without the all-seeing eye of government watching every move." — Ross Ulbricht (Letter to Judge Forrest, 2015) #freedom #privacy

"I can't speak for what Satoshi intended, but I sure don't think it involved bitcoin exchanges that have draconian rules about KYC, AML, passports, freezes on accounts and laws about reporting 'suspicious activity' to the local secret police." — Tim May (CoinDesk, 2018) #bitcoin #surveillance #kyc #regulation

"Tracking everyone is no longer inconceivable, and is in fact happening all the time." — Moxie Marlinspike (We Should All Have Something To Hide, 2013) #surveillance #tracking #privacy #warning

"The simplest open protocol that is able to create a censorship-resistant global social network." — fiatjaf (Nostr Protocol Documentation, 2020) #nostr #protocol #censorshipresistance

"Capable, generous men do not create victims, they nurture them." — Julian Assange (Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet, 2012)

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

"Google and Facebook are not really in the business of data – they are in the business of power." — Carissa Véliz (Privacy is power (Aeon), 2019) #surveillance #power #techcompanies #data

"If the federal government can't even count how many laws there are, what chance does an individual have of being certain that they are not acting in violation of one of them?" — Moxie Marlinspike (We Should All Have Something To Hide, 2013) #law #privacy #surveillance #government

"Those with access to these resources — students, librarians, scientists — have been given an enormous privilege. You get to feed at this banquet of knowledge while the rest of the world is locked out." — Aaron Swartz (Guerilla Open Access Manifesto, 2008) #openaccess

"How can we translate the freedom afforded by the Internet to ordinary life?" — Jim Bell (Assassination Politics, 1997) #freedom #internet #cypherpunk

"They're abridging the freedom and privacy of all citizens—to defend us against a bogeyman that they will not explain. The decision to literally trade away our privacy is one that must be made by the whole society, not made unilaterally by a military spy agency." — John Gilmore (Crypto Rebels (WIRED), 1993) #privacy #freedom #government #nsa #democracy

"Cyberspace consists of transactions, relationships, and thought itself, arrayed like a standing wave in the web of our communications. Ours is a world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but it is not where bodies live." — John Perry Barlow (A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, 1996) #cyberspace #philosophy #digitalworld

"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

"By its very nature, it favors the bright (who can put it to use) over the dull (who cannot). It favors the adaptable (who are quick to see the merit of the new) over the sluggish (who cling to time-tested ways). And what two better words are there to describe government bureaucracy than 'dull' and 'sluggish'?" — Chuck Hammill (From Crossbows To Cryptography: Techno-Thwarting The State, 1987) #government #freedom

"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

"You claim there are problems among us that you need to solve. You use this claim as an excuse to invade our precincts." — John Perry Barlow (A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, 1996) #government #regulation #cyberspace