"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

"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

"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

"We hope this will inspire others to work in this fascinating area in which participation has been discouraged in the recent past by a nearly total government monopoly." — Whitfield Diffie and Martin E. Hellman (New Directions in Cryptography, 1976) #cryptography #government #monopoly #freedom

"I had this view of cryptography in which the critical value of cryptography was that you didn't have to trust other people." — Whitfield Diffie (ITAS Interview, 1992) #cryptography #trust #autonomy

"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

"Because cash is permissionless, it is censorship resistant." — Jerry Brito (The Case for Electronic Cash, 2019) #cash #censorship #permissionless #freedom

"Technology has let the genie out of the bottle. Crypto anarchy is liberating individuals from coercion by their physical neighbors—who cannot know who they are on the Net—and from governments." — Tim May (Crypto Anarchy and Virtual Communities, 1994) #cryptoanarchy #freedom #government

"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

"The keyboard is the great equalizer — better than the Glock .45." — St. Jude (Jude Milhon) (Modem Grrrl (Wired), 1995) #technology #empowerment #equality #defense

"Free software is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of 'free' as in 'free speech,' not as in 'free beer.'" — Richard Stallman (GNU Project, 1985) #freesoftware #liberty #opensource

"The tech powers that be are nothing without our data." — Carissa Véliz (Privacy is power (Aeon), 2019) #data #power #resistance #techcompanies

"By understanding that cypherpunk theory and practice each consist of two complementary dynamics—privacy/transparency, pro-active/re-active—it becomes possible to understand that the cypherpunk movement provides the basis for activists and citizens to resist large surveillance institutions." — Patrick D. Anderson (Of Cypherpunks and Sousveillance, 2022) #cypherpunk #privacy #transparency #resistance #surveillance

"Bitcoin seems to be a very promising idea. I like the idea of basing security on the assumption that the CPU power of honest participants outweighs that of the attacker." — Hal Finney (Cryptography Mailing List, 2008) #bitcoin #security #proofofwork

"The cypherpunks were troublemakers: controversial, radical, unrelenting, but also practical. They made things." — Jamie Bartlett (Cypherpunks Write Code, American Scientist) #cypherpunk #code

"We hope this will inspire others to work in this fascinating area in which participation has been discouraged in the recent past by a nearly total government monopoly." — Whitfield Diffie and Martin E. Hellman (New Directions in Cryptography, 1976) #cryptography #government #monopoly #freedom

"Again, we need to win political, not technological, victories in order to protect our privacy." — Hal Finney (Politics vs Technology, 1994) #politics #privacy

"The cypherpunk movement provides an intelligible, viable, and effective model of data activism and strategic agency." — Patrick D. Anderson (Of Cypherpunks and Sousveillance, 2022) #cypherpunk #dataactivism #resistance #agency

"Even more than monetary gain, personal data bestows power on those who collect and analyse it, and that is what makes it so coveted." — Carissa Véliz (Privacy is power (Aeon), 2019) #data #power #surveillance #privacy