“The much bigger thing is that we as human beings shepherd and create our intellectual history as a civilization. And it is that intellectual history on the shelf that we can pull off the shelf to do stuff, and to avoid doing the dumb things again, because somebody already did the dumb thing and wrote about their experience and we don't need to do it again. There are several processes that are creating that record, and other processes where people are trying to destroy bits of that record, and others that are trying to prevent people from putting things into that record in the first place. We all live off that intellectual record. So what we want to do is get as much into the record, prevent as much as possible being deleted from the record, and then make the record as searchable as possible.”

— Julian Assange , book When Google Met Wikileaks

Source: Julian Assange, "When Google Met Wikileaks" (ORbooks, New York, 2014), p.124

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Jan. 5, 2022. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The much bigger thing is that we as human beings shepherd and create our intellectual history as a civilization. And i…" by Julian Assange?

Julian Assange 34

Australian editor, activist, publisher and journalist 1971

Related quotes

“People are best on records and books because you can turn them off or put them back on the shelf.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Source: Solipsist

“We do not need more intellectual power, we need more spiritual power. We do not need more of the things that are seen, we need more of the things that are unseen.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

“When the history of our times is written, will we be remembered as the generation that turned our backs in a moment of global crisis or will it be recorded that we did the right thing?”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

Nelson Mandela on Aids, 46664 Concert, Tromso, Norway (11 Jun 2005). Source: From Nelson Mandela By Himself: The Authorised Book of Quotations © 2010 by Nelson R. Mandela and The Nelson Mandela Foundation http://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/mini-site/selected-quotes
2000s

“Falling hard for somebody makes you do things you never thought you'd do before. Like pulling off an A in History or finally facing the truth about yourself”

Steve Kluger book Almost Like Being in Love

Source: Almost Like Being in Love

“The study of history is the best medicine for a sick mind; for in history you have a record of the infinite variety of human experience plainly set out for all to see; and in that record you can find for yourself and your country both examples and warnings; fine things to take as models, base things, rotten through and through, to avoid.”

Livy (-59–17 BC) Roman historian

Introduction to Ab urbe condita (trans. Aubrey de Sélincourt, 1960)
Context: The study of history is the best medicine for a sick mind; for in history you have a record of the infinite variety of human experience plainly set out for all to see; and in that record you can find for yourself and your country both examples and warnings; fine things to take as models, base things, rotten through and through, to avoid.
I hope my passion for Rome's past has not impaired my judgement, for I do honestly believe that no country has ever been greater or purer than ours or richer in good citizens and noble deeds...