Quotes by Daniel Ellsberg

About Daniel Ellsberg:

Daniel Ellsberg is an activist and former United States military analyst who, while employed by the RAND Corporation, precipitated a national political controversy in 1971 when he released the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Pentagon study of U.S. government decision-making in relation to the Vietnam War, to The New York Times and other newspapers.
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There are two types of courage involved with what I did. When it comes to picking up a rifle, millions of people are capable of doing that, as we see in Iraq or Vietnam. But when it comes to risking their careers, or risking being invited to lunch by...

Daniel Ellsberg

Obama is making a choice now that will lead to the deaths of many thousands of civilians in Afghanistan by American hands. By ordinary standards of presidents, he is a decent man. But those standards aren't good enough. He's in a position either to k...

Daniel Ellsberg

Look, all administrations, all governments lie, all officials lie and nothing they say is to be believed. That's a pretty good rule.

Daniel Ellsberg

It was a good 15 or 20 years before anyone at Rand would be in the same room with me. They didn't want the question raised, 'What's your relationship with Daniel Ellsberg?' And not one of them wrote me a letter because they didn't want a letter of th...

Daniel Ellsberg

The fact is that when it comes to judgment as to what should be secret and what should not be secret, Julian Assange's judgment has been pretty good so far.

Daniel Ellsberg

My feelings of revulsion and foreboding about nuclear weapons had not changed an iota since 1945, and they have never left me. Since I was 14, the overriding objective of my life has been to prevent the occurrence of nuclear war.

Daniel Ellsberg

If monarchy is corrupting - and it is - wait till you see what overt empire does to us.

Daniel Ellsberg

We were young, we were foolish, we were arrogant, but we were right.

Daniel Ellsberg

There should be at least one leak like the Pentagon Papers every year.

Daniel Ellsberg

President Johnson put destroyers in harm's way in the Tonkin Gulf not only once, but several times, with the, with a lot of his people hoping that it would lead to a confrontation and claiming that it had. And could have resulted in the lost of many ...

Daniel Ellsberg

I agree that there are things that should be kept secret.

Daniel Ellsberg

Only we, the public, can force our representatives to reverse their abdication of the war powers that the Constitution gives exclusively to the Congress.

Daniel Ellsberg

Nixon did have a secret plan, and I knew that it involved making threats of nuclear war to North Vietnam.

Daniel Ellsberg

If there's another 9/11 or a major war in the Middle-East involving a U.S. attack on Iran, I have no doubt that there will be, the day after or within days an equivalent of a Reichstag fire decree that will involve massive detentions in this country.

Daniel Ellsberg

Author Bio

  • NameDaniel Ellsberg
  • DescriptionAmerican economist and whistleblower
  • BornApril 7, 1931
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionOfficer; Economist; Author
  • AwardsRight Livelihood Award; Gandhi Peace Award; Whistleblower Prize