Birgitta Jonsdottir Quotes

If you live in a democracy and don't have freedom of information, it's not a democracy. And people have to understand that if you don't have freedom of information online, it's not going to be offline, either.

People want real changes, and they understand that we have to change the system.

The Pirate Party started in Sweden in 2006, and it only had one agenda: to change draconian copyright laws. But it's changed and shifted primarily because the questions of human rights and cyber have become much more relevant. So if you want to place it somewhere on the spectrum, I would say it's a party that has its roots in civilian rights. But we are not like many left parties that want to regulate citizens and create nanny states. We believe that regulation should be on the powerful, not the individuals.

Edward Snowden has inspired changes and awareness, which is very important in this day and age, and sometimes egos need to be set aside, even with powerful people, and we need to look at the full picture.

We have to modernize how we make laws.

We have to make sure whenever you are dealing with big things like global warming, world security, refugees, the E.U. question, access to information, it needs to be done with an awareness that all of these things interconnect.

I feel it is important to point out that individuals can make a difference, that things that seem impossible one day might suddenly shift into a possibility the next day.

In a sense the Pirate Party is very similar to what happened for the Bernie Sanders campaign, where people felt inspired and they felt like they were having an impact, a big grass-roots-inspired movement, in particular with young people.

Maybe [Iceland] could be sort of a testing ground for solutions because we are few and because we are really a tech-oriented nation. Everybody is a gadget freak. We spend a lot of time indoors.