Shane Smith

“All I know is that when I go somewhere, I'm not an autobot. I am a human being. I am not an actor.”

“Everyone is trying to say, 'This is Gen Y; we're not an old company. We're not doing old content.'”

“I never thought we had a chance of impacting anything. I am just starting to realize that we can change things - not just VICE, but all of us. In fact, we have to.”

“The greatest propaganda coup of the American Right has been to convince its citizens that we are in the grip of a liberal conspiracy. As a result, Obama is to the right of Richard Nixon on most issues. And there is we believe, certainly some space to exploit there. And we, VICE, aim to exploit it.”

“I want to build the next CNN with 'VICE' - it's within my grasp.”

“People think because 'Vice' is irreverent and because we're crazy, we're stunt journalists. You know what? I don't actually care.”

“One of the shocking things when I go back to Canada is they cut off the tall trees - it's sort of like everyone's the same. Everyone's going to be the same, we're all okay. Just the, sort of, cultural, 'We're all okay.'”

“If not doing VICE, I probably would be selling Cokes on the beach in Vietnam. I like the sea.”

“If you're coming from America to Iraq, then how are you supposed to be objective? I mean, you could pay lip service to being objective, but how are you going to objective when you're embedded with the Marines? The Marines are saving your life every day and they're protecting you.”

“The greatest propaganda coup of the American Right has been to convince its citizens that we are in the grip of a liberal conspiracy.”

“Do whatever interests you the most. Passion breeds success.”

“I thought I was a pretty good writer, but I didn't have anything to write about. I wanted to go out in the world, have some adventures and then write about them.”

“If you're big in Montreal, you're big in Quebec. If you're big in Toronto, you're big in Canada. But if you're big in New York, you're big in the rest of the world.”

“Once you have a certain amount of money, it ceases to be an issue. I'd rather put my cultural imprint on the fabric of life. After money, all you want is immortality.”

“I think that Twitter and YT and blogs are keeping media more honest. Everyone can be a journalist now. Everyone is a fact checker.”

“I think if you look at the failure of journalism in the modern age, then I don't want to be called a journalist.”

“The best piece of advice I ever got from anyone was when Spike Jonze said, 'Take money out of the equation.' And that's actually when Vice started making lots of money. That's when I stopped worrying about money and started worrying about what I wanted to do.”

“The human race is facing all kinds of problems, and all we are doing is pointing fingers and saying, 'Your interpretation of the problem is different from my interpretations of the problem.'”

“There are only two companies in the world that can help me. That's Facebook and Google, because they are going to make me the largest digital network in the world, which is my goal.”

“Most of the time, when the mainstream media reports on something, it never tells the whole story.”