John Ashcroft Quotes
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The path we have chosen is constitutional.
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What we learned on September 11 is that the unthinkable is now thinkable in the world.
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It's a different world.
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We need to strengthen our analytic capacity in Washington, we need to centralize the anti-terrorism effort.
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Doing what is right in the face of adversity is not always easy or popular. Critics may assail you, but the critics don't always realize what they don't know or don't understand, because they don't have access to all the information.
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The goal of terror is not traditional territorial enlargement; rather the war target of the terrorist is the dismemberment of the will of the community it terrorizes.
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The last time I looked at September 11th, an American street was a war zone. There was a street in Virginia that was a war zone.
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I decided this early on at Justice: if the traditional way was the most effective way of doing something, then we'd maintain it. But if it was not functioning at optimum levels, we would be doing the country a disservice by continuing to do things 'like we've always done them.'
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Agents need to be free to pursue investigations in ways that they haven't. There have been restraints that a reformed FBI needs to make sure we don't impose.
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It doesn't help to wait until something happens and then prosecute the offenders, especially if it's the idea of the offender to extinguish himself in the commission of the crime.
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I'm convinced that faith is a matter of inspiration, not a matter of imposition. It is something a person models rather than mandates. Faith does not impose itself on other people. Imposition usually sacrifices somebody else; it seeks to injure or extort others. This is what the terrorist does in an attempt to impose his religion on the world.
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An FBI agent ought to be able to surf the net and look for sites that instruct people how to make bombs.
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We've got to understand that the whole nature of the way American democracy guards its freedom has been changed.
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The Internet provides very serious challenges to our ability to keep from children the kinds of things that are destructive to them.
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All of us want to have meaning in our lives and want to feel like we're doing something that makes a difference. I believe we're doing that in the Justice Department.
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Sometimes the act of walking in the face of the elements helps us come to grips with reality. Or it simply exhausts us to the point of seeing the futility of resisting reality and the futility of denial.
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The worst mistake a boss can make is not to say 'well done'.
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The FBI has long been a part of the security for the nation's banks because bank robberies have been a priority.
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We have to think outside the box, inside the Constitution, find ways to do things that will elevate our security, reduce the risk of the incidence of terrorist attack.
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To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies, and pause to America's friends. They encourage people of good will to remain silent in the face of evil.
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To me, failure is not fatal unless you quit; getting knocked down is not embarrassing unless you allow it to keep you down.
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If necessity is the mother of invention, it's the father of cooperation. And we're cooperating like never before.
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A trustee has a responsibility to guard the assets of others with a higher degree of care than he does his own.
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Nothing that we have authorized conflicts with any law regarding privacy or any provision of the constitution.