"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

"'Swiss banks in cyberspace' will make economic transactions much more liquid and much less subject to local rules and regulations." — Tim May (Crypto Anarchy and Virtual Communities, 1994) #digitalcash #economics #regulation #freedom

"The supply of leaks is very large. It's helpful for us to have more people in this industry. It's protective to us." — Julian Assange (Forbes, 2010) #whistleblowing #transparency #leaks

"The internet is a tool of freedom and self-determination. Meddling in its mechanics is destructive. Whenever a website is blocked, a protocol is corrupted at some low level or undesirable traffic shaping occurs then seismic ripples of censorship and destruction lead to degradation of the network. The internet is fundamental to humanity, and must be protected at all costs." — Amir Taaki (The libbitcoin Manifesto, 2013) #internet #freedom #censorship #resistance

"Privacy is the foundation that allows freedom of speech, thought, and association to thrive. Without it, these freedoms exist only on paper and can't be exercised in practice in a meaningful way." — Zooko Wilcox (Cypherpunk Technologies Press Release, 2023) #privacy #freespeech #freedom

"But there is another solution, one advocated forcefully by computer scientist David Chaum. Rather than relying on new laws and more government, Chaum looks to technical solutions. And these solutions rely on the ancient science devoted to keeping information confidential: cryptography." — Hal Finney (Protecting privacy with electronic cash, 1993) #cryptography #privacy #government

"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 see Bitcoin as ultimately becoming a reserve currency for banks, playing much the same role as gold did in the early days of banking." — Hal Finney (BitcoinTalk Forum, 2010) #bitcoin #banking #gold

"Perhaps we never fully understand that balance until one of those secret rights disappears without warning, because no one even knew it mattered until it was gone." — Peter Valkenburgh (Your Secret Right to Cash, 2017) #rights #warning #privacy #freedom

"Building security from day one is much easier than adding it on as an afterthought." — Martin Hellman (Charles Babbage Institute Oral History, 2004) #security

"If you think technology can solve your security problems, then you don't understand the problems and you don't understand the technology." — Bruce Schneier (Secrets and Lies, 2000) #security

"The scandal isn't how they're breaking the law. The scandal is that they don't have to break the law." — Edward Snowden (Joe Rogan Experience, 2019) #surveillance #law #government #legal

"Cash is an escape valve in our increasingly intermediated and therefore surveilled world." — Jerry Brito (The Case for Electronic Cash, 2019) #cash #privacy #surveillance #freedom

"Strong cryptography can resist an unlimited amount of violence. No amount of coercive force will ever solve a math problem." — Tim May (Cypherpunks Mailing List, 1993) #cryptography #violence #mathematics

"In one direction lies unprecedented scrutiny and control of people's lives; in the other, secure parity between individuals and organizations. The shape of society in the next century may depend on which approach predominates." — David Chaum (Security Without Identification: Transaction Systems to Make Big Brother Obsolete, 1985) #privacy #surveillance

"Every action I took was out of a desire to enable people to have freedom and control over their own lives." — Ross Ulbricht (Letter to Judge Forrest, 2015) #freedom #autonomy

"If cryptography's most basic aim is to enable secure communications, how could it not be a colossal failure of our field when ordinary people lack even a modicum of communication privacy when interacting electronically?" — Phillip Rogaway (The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work, 2015) #cryptography #privacy

"Courage is contagious. If you demonstrate that individuals can leak something and go on to live a good life, it's tremendously incentivizing to people." — Julian Assange (Forbes, 2010) #whistleblowing

"Some have predicted that the initial success of electronic money may be in the form of a technically illegal 'black market' where crypto-hackers buy and sell information, using cryptography to protect against government crackdowns." — Hal Finney (Protecting privacy with electronic cash, 1993) #digitalcash #cryptography #resistance

"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