Quotes by John Ashcroft

• 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.
• Reasonable regulations regarding the ownership of weapons are appropriate.
• What we learned on September 11 is that the unthinkable is now thinkable in the world.
• We've got to understand that the whole nature of the way American democracy guards its freedom has been changed.
• We've got a major problem in our culture, as it relates to the Internet and pornography and child pornography.
• We need to strengthen our analytic capacity in Washington, we need to centralize the anti-terrorism effort.
• Prior to September 11, we thought the world beyond our shores was one world of risk and the world in our continent was another world of risk.
• 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.
• 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.
• An FBI agent ought to be able to surf the net and look for sites that instruct people how to make bombs.
• I don't play full court anymore. I just play half-court.
• If necessity is the mother of invention, it's the father of cooperation. And we're cooperating like never before.
• 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.
• It's a different world.
• Nothing remains great without a capacity to change and to accommodate the conditions of a changing world.
• The FBI. is a massive culture. It's been a culture that served America well, and it's been focused on prosecution. But what we need in terms of terrorism is prevention.
• People who commit crimes should be responsible for those crimes. It doesn't matter whether they're priests or ministers or atheists.
• There is no priority higher than the prevention of terrorism.
• The FBI has long been a part of the security for the nation's banks because bank robberies have been a priority.
• The Internet provides very serious challenges to our ability to keep from children the kinds of things that are destructive to them.
• The liberties and freedoms which we hold dear and we recognize and cherish and respect guide the way we gather information in the United States.
• The new rule says that the FBI has the right to go to public places on the same terms and conditions as other members of the public for counter-terrorism purposes.
• The path we have chosen is constitutional.
• The Patriot Act allows and provides a basis for an exchange of information.
• The way the terrorist is trained to operate, especially the suicide terrorists, makes punishment and the threat of punishment far less valuable to those who would prevent the crime.
• The worst mistake a boss can make is not to say 'well done'.
• Nothing that we have authorized conflicts with any law regarding privacy or any provision of the constitution.