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" When Estonia reestablished its sovereignty after a half century of successive thuggish, totalitarian, foreign occupations by the Soviets, the Nazis, and then again the Soviets, we knew we wanted to create a democratic country characterized by rule of law and respect for human rights. "

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" The domestic policy of any president, U.S. or otherwise, is his or her own concern, as long as democratic norms are followed. "

Toomas Hendrik Ilves

Long

Own

Norms

" Digital warfare, in the Clausewitz definition as 'the continuation of policy by other means,' reached Western public consciousness via my own country, Estonia, in 2007 when our governmental, banking, and news media servers were hit with 'distributed denial-of-service attacks,' which is when hackers overload servers until they shut down. "

" Brits, Scandinavians, Finns, Estonians consider themselves rational, logical, unencumbered by emotional arguments; we are businesslike, stubborn, and hard-working. "

" That was something that shaped my thinking regarding Estonia: the idea that we should be getting our young people to work with computers. "

" George Bush and I share a love of steel brush cutters. It turns out we use the same professional brush cutter. He asked me what I did. I said I cut brush. He says, 'Oh, what do you use?' I said steel. He goes, 'Oh, me too.' "

" In cyberwarfare, it is much harder to identify the attacker and, therefore, to know how to retaliate. "

" My American undergraduate education probably gave me a better idea of the fundamentals of what European civilization is about, better than the undergraduate education you get at most European universities. "

" If getting young people computer-literate through putting school systems online is a no-brainer, at least in retrospect, getting older people and those in rural areas online can be a tougher nut to crack. "

" Generally, people's fear and hesitancy regarding greater computerization comes from a George Orwell/'1984'-based metaphor of a single computer or data base where all your information is stored, knows everything about you, and can use this information at will and for evil purposes. "

" Where a country lies is a subjective decision and only in part a product of its own desire. Much, if not most, is determined by what others believe about it. "

" I was surprised by some of my French colleagues who immediately assumed that because I spoke English with an American accent, that, therefore, you must be a supporter of whoever is the current president of the United States. There seems to be this widespread feeling that, 'Oh, American accent - therefore, you like cowboy boots.' "

Toomas Hendrik Ilves

Feeling

You

" There was a period in my life when I was very young that I wrote a sonnet a day just to learn concision in writing. "

" I remember starting to read about the Soviet Union when I was eight years old; I think I was reading my father's 'New York Times.' "

" In a modern digitalized world, it is possible to paralyze a country without attacking its defense forces: The country can be ruined by simply bringing its SCADA systems to a halt. To impoverish a country, one can erase its banking records. The most sophisticated military technology can be rendered irrelevant. In cyberspace, no country is an island. "

" We Estonians will do what is necessary to join the European Union. "

" Cybersecurity needs to be taken seriously by everyone. "

" Little by little, we're becoming a boring Nordic country. "

" Diplomacy between a powerful, victorious army and a side that's losing doesn't really work well. "

" In Germany, a country that for obvious reasons is far more attuned than most to the dangers of demagogy, populism, and nationalism, lawmakers have already proposed taking legal measures against fake news. When populist, nationalist fake news threatens the liberal democratic center, other Europeans may follow suit. "

" When hackers have access to powerful computers that use brute force hacking, they can crack almost any password; even one user with insecure access being successfully hacked can result in a major breach. "

" Since I've been writing about things my entire life, I thought, 'Well, that's what I would do as a president is to read and then write and talk about things that are interesting to me.' "

" Fake news is cheap to produce. Genuine journalism is expensive. "

" The Russian Federation's practice of instant citizenship, whereby Russian passports are distributed willy-nilly to ethnic Russians abroad so they can be 'protected' in their current homeland, is unacceptable. Passports are travel documents, not a tool to justify aggression. "

" The thing people forget is that the entire world - or, at least, Europe, U.S., transatlantic, Russia, Soviet Union - that security architecture has been in place since 1945 and has been refined. Already, the U.N. charter that everyone signed is that you can't change borders through use of force or even threat of use of force. "

" I'm not afraid of code. I mean, I understand how these things work. I thought that that was the one area where Estonia was playing on a level playing field. "

" It is hard to work with the nagging doubt that perhaps some foreign intelligence agency is reading all your correspondence, especially when you know they have done so in the past. "

" In Russia, tweeting or sharing real news that's embarrassing to the regime can land you in prison. Imagine, then, the response of the regime to 'fake news' that's damaging to the Kremlin. "

" The fake news is - I mean, as a tool of warfare - has been there for decades and decades and decades. It was never very well done until, really, the Ukraine, though I would say that the Russians used to complain about fake things to say the State Department. "

" In both Russia and the U.S., there are a very small number of very, very rich people, and then there are a lot of people who don't have anything. The less inequality you have in a society, the more social peace you have. It's kind of a no-brainer. "

" Everything can be known and, in some cases, everything is known. "