“When people fear surveillance, whether it exists or not, they grow afraid to speak their minds and hearts freely to their government or to anyone else.”
Quoted in Rick Perlstein, Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America (2008), p. 549
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Sam Ervin 2
Democratic United States Senator from North Carolina 1896–1985Related quotes

First attributed to Jefferson in 1945, this does not appear in any known Jefferson document. When governments fear the people, there is liberty... http://wiki.monticello.org/mediawiki/index.php/When_governments_fear_the_people,_there_is_liberty...(Quotation), Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia. It first appears in 1914, in [Barnhill, John Basil, John Basil Barnhill, Indictment of Socialism No. 3, Barnhill-Tichenor Debate on Socialism, http://debs.indstate.edu/b262b3_1914.pdf, PDF, 2008-10-16, 1914, National Rip-Saw Publishing, Saint Louis, Missouri, p. 34]
Misattributed
Variant: Where the people fear the government you have tyranny. Where the government fears the people you have liberty.

Letter as published in The Letters of Mozart & His Family (1938) translated and edited by Emily Anderson, p. 1114.

“When the rich grow afraid, they get nasty. We say: A government for need not greed!”
“Anamnesis” (p. 222)
Iron Council (2004)

The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/apr/20/we-should-all-be-hactivists "We should all be hacktivists now", Column in the Guardian, 20 April 2012.
Attributed, In the Media
February 27, 1963, page 47.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council

Declaration of Conscience (1950)
Context: The American people are sick and tired of being afraid to speak their minds lest they be politically smeared as "Communists" or "Fascists" by their opponents. Freedom of speech is not what it used to be in America. It has been so abused by some that it is not exercised by others.
The American people are sick and tired of seeing innocent people smeared and guilty people whitewashed.