Ashcroft Quotes & Sayings

The stigma of being an unmarried mother was something we can't comprehend today. It was not uncommon that you'd go off somewhere to have your child, then give it up for adoption. — Michael Ashcroft

While F.D.R. once told Americans that we have nothing to fear but fear itself, Mr. Ashcroft is delighted to play the part of Fear Itself, an assignment in which he lets his imagination run riot. — Frank Rich

Only God, no other kings! — John Ashcroft

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. — John Ashcroft

I agree with the Speaker and have concluded that my other activities do not permit me to devote the time that membership of the Lords properly requires. — Michael Ashcroft

The state's interest in effective crime-fighting should never vitiate the citizens' Bill of Rights. — John Ashcroft

How sad, that the group with the most access to the truth chose in several strategic instances to look the other way. — John Ashcroft

To build public support for what they're doing, scientists are always going to say there is the prospect to cure all these horrible diseases, but they're cautious for the most part in saying when those cures will arrive. — Richard Ashcroft

On August 1, the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel granted the CIA's request to begin water-boarding Abu Zubaydah. The technique, tantamount to torture, was designed to elicit confessions through the threat of imminent death by drowning. That same day John Yoo, now a deputy to Attorney General Ashcroft, advised the White House that the laws against torture did not apply to American interrogators. The president, the vice president, the secretary of defense, and the director of Central Intelligence approved. The — Tim Weiner

The certainty with which Cameron informed MPs and Shadow ministers of the specifics of a Labour offer that never actually existed suggests a degree of flexibility with the truth. — Michael Ashcroft

If America is to be great in the future, it will be if we understand that our source is not civic and temporal, but our source is godly and eternal. — John Ashcroft

What do people really believe in any more apart from sport and music? — Richard Ashcroft

There's nothing more rewarding or important than to be involved in God's work of redemption. — John Ashcroft

What we learned on September 11 is that the unthinkable is now thinkable in the world. — John Ashcroft

If the events of September 11, 2001, have proven anything, it's that the terrorists can attack us, but they can't take away what makes us American
our freedom, our liberty, our civil rights. No, only Attorney General John Ashcroft can do that. — Jon Stewart

A majority of all defectors who voted Labour in 2010 but for a different party in 2015 said Ed Miliband had helped push them to another party. For those switching to the Tories, the second biggest reason was the fear that a Labour government would spend and borrow too much. — Michael Ashcroft

anybody who decided to come after the random girl out by herself late at night would find themselves at the rough end of a very enthusiastic Drool Attack, courtesy of my gorgeous black Lab and his ridiculously huge tongue. — Laurie Elisabeth Ashcroft

We are a nation called to defend freedom - a tradition that is not a grant of any government or document, but is an endowment from God. — John Ashcroft

What we don't listen to, is what I am continually telling people in which nobody really, to get down to the nitty gritty believes, is that there is a piece of Divinity in us. — Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki

I am a rootless individual, but when I land in Belize, I have that feeling of comfort that I am returning home. — Michael Ashcroft

An FBI agent ought to be able to surf the net and look for sites that instruct people how to make bombs. — John Ashcroft

If you take a particle down, past neutrinos, you get vortexes, little whirlpools of energy. This is amazing, because what it really means, is everything is the same. Everything is one of those, in various combinations. — Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki

The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved, — John Ashcroft

I'm one of those people. I can be sold by the candy in life, and then it can be stripped away within a split second and I feel like I've seen too much. And that's the way, I've been like that most of my life, so I could never say I was there yet in any stretch of the imagination. — Richard Ashcroft

I can't pin myself on any fixed religion, really. I'm just one of those sad, early-century people who just drifts around and picks up a bit of this and a bit of that. I was confirmed a Christian when I was a kid purely because I wanted a piece of jewelry, so I don't know whether this is just another extension of that. — Richard Ashcroft

The keys are, or were, the training methods used by the ancient mystery schools. We've got hints and tips, we've got little bits on the papyri, but we don't have, in our hands, a complete curriculum of the ways in which they induced altered states of consciousness and the projection of the mind. — Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki

I think that the Apocalypse is going to be in this new way of thinking. Somewhere between now and 2020, there has got to be a break though. Not just in science, we've done that, but a breakthrough in the human mind. — Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki

I continue to say that I wish we had another word other than magic. It no longer means what we are doing or we are attempting to do. We have to find another terminology. Magic is first and foremost a way of belief. — Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki

I was trained in the Society of the Inner Light. Now that requires that you spend a certain amount of time in meditation, it also requires that you spend this time in early morning, because they say you're closer to the sleep state at that point. — Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki

Come back down to basics. The basic things of life, the basic things for me are the things that turn me on more than anything. I'm actually trying to go back from where I was running from ... the more essential things that I was ignoring. — Richard Ashcroft

Nobody really wants to work anymore. Nobody has the dedication to say, "It's going to take me ten years to get through this thing." — Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki

Attorney General John Ashcroft has been hospitalized. I believe he is suffering from homophobia. No, actually, it was just gallstones, but when they gave him the hospital gown that opens in the back, he refused to wear it, he thought it was a gay wedding dress. — Jay Leno

Reasonable regulations regarding the ownership of weapons are appropriate. — John Ashcroft

Attorney General John Ashcroft bid farewell to the Justice Department with a goodbye address. The voluntary resignation came as a bit of a disappointment to the attorney general, who had hoped to be raptured out of office. — Jon Stewart

By the end of that summer in Ashcroft my father had nearly run out of stories. He'd almost read his father's full library and arrived at last at Moby Dick. The edition I have is a Penguin paperback (Book 2,333, Herman Melville, Penguin, London). It's been well-thumbed, at least triple-read, there's that smell the fat orange-spine Penguins get when their pages have yellowed and the book bulges, basically the smell of complex humanity, sort of sweat and salt and endeavour. Like all the fat orange Penguins, it gets fatter with reading, which it should, because in a way the more you read it the bigger your own experience of the world gets, the fatter your soul. Try it, you'll see. — Niall Williams

I don't regard that as a Guardian Angle. I really do think, in a sense, that we are our own Guardian Angles. But we don't listen to ourselves. — Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki

We must embrace the power of faith, but we must never confuse politics and piety. For me, may I say that it is against my religion to impose my religion. — John Ashcroft

I'm intrigued by all that, by religions, I'm intrigued by Jesus Christ. It's all fascinating. — Richard Ashcroft

Attorney General John Ashcroft is in intensive care. He's suffering from a severe case of pancreatitis, which they can't really figure out because he's not really a drinker. They think he might have picked up some type of infection while wiping his ass with the Bill of Rights. — Bill Maher

I don't play full court anymore. I just play half-court. — John Ashcroft

None of us is as good as we think we are. Every one of us is more than we think we can be. — Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki

My father was one of the fortunate wartime servicemen: he made a full recovery from his injuries, was promoted to captain, survived the war, had a satisfying career as a colonial officer and, eventually, died in February 2002, a month before his 85th birthday. — Michael Ashcroft

I think that there is something in the human psyche, that when it approaches a big mark up point it tends to get doom laden. — Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki

A lot of people are now criticizing Attorney General John Ashcroft for his policy on detaining what he considers suspicious people. I think he's going a little overboard. Today, he arrested the entire band Foreigner. — Jay Leno

To me, failure is not fatal unless you quit; getting knocked down is not embarrassing unless you allow it to keep you down. — John Ashcroft

By tearing down the wall between law enforcement and the intelligence community, we have been able to share information in a way that was virtually impossible before the Patriot Act. — John Ashcroft

I learnt a lesson that you mustn't worry what people think if you are achieving your objective. — Michael Ashcroft

President Bush delivered his first State of the Union address, riding high on an 82-percent approval rating, and with Attorney General John Ashcroft dispatching agents to interview the other 18 percent. — Jon Stewart

I don't believe in hours and hours of meditation. The mind gets tired and starts to fold in on itself. — Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki

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. — John Ashcroft

In other words, under Attorney General John Ashcroft, the FBI, the INS and the Department of Justice are so out of control that they have actually begun to enforce U.S. immigration laws. — Ann Coulter

Nothing remains great without a capacity to change and to accommodate the conditions of a changing world. — John Ashcroft

I feel the best way to ensure Americans' freedom is to tighten restrictions on that freedom in any way possible. Only through wiretaps, illegal searches and seizures, unfettered government intrusion, a controlled media and a complete crackdown on free speech can we ensure the liberties of all people. — John Ashcroft

People who commit crimes should be responsible for those crimes. It doesn't matter whether they're priests or ministers or atheists. — John Ashcroft

While loyalists and defectors overall said John Smith did a better job of standing up for Labour's values, they put Blair ahead on representing the whole country, appealing beyond traditional Labour voters and offering strong, competent leadership; switchers to the Tories gave him a clear lead in all categories. — Michael Ashcroft

[The war on terrorism isn't a religious war, but] a defense of our right to make moral choices, to seek fellowship with God that is chosen and not commanded. — John Ashcroft

George Bush and John Ashcroft were religious in a scary way, but the rational among us could always take heart that, deep down, the Bush administration was more cynical than messianic. — Matt Taibbi

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. — John Ashcroft

When you're in doubt about the future and you're in doubt about how solid this thing is that you're laying your life and your soul on the line for, you will probably retract into yourself a little bit and think, No, there's only so much I can give to something that everyone doesn't believe in. There's been chipping away, people have been chipping away at it, so it's just you in the spotlight in front of all these people. — Richard Ashcroft

We spent too much time attacking Gordon Brown and Labour rather than setting out our own plans. People had decided they wanted change - the thing they were not sure about was the alternative we were offering, so going on and on about Labour missed the point. — Michael Ashcroft

Conservatives like to talk about 'the strivers' who share what they like to think of as Conservative values. But as I found in my Blue Collar Tories research in 2012, such people no longer see the party as their natural ally. — Michael Ashcroft

My dear, life rarely gives us what we want at the moment we consider appropriate. Adventures do occur, but not punctually. — Peggy Ashcroft

I find George Bush and Dick Cheney frightening, Donald Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft frightening. — Barbra Streisand

The path we have chosen is constitutional. — John Ashcroft

Any true musician, true artist, knows that when they're in that point of total artistic creation, whether on stage or in the studio or writing or whatever, that's the closest moment [to creation]. And that's what keeps all these people addicted to getting back to that moment again. — Richard Ashcroft

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. — John Ashcroft

When I was in my early twenties, I hoped one day to own a Victoria Cross, the ultimate decoration in Britain and the Commonwealth for bravery in the face of the enemy. — Michael Ashcroft

The fact that the Conservatives are losing voters to UKIP while struggling to attract those who voted for other parties in 2010 suggests they have still not successfully shown what a Conservative government is for. This needs to be done on a broad front in a way that encompasses the economy and public services. — Michael Ashcroft

A trustee has a responsibility to guard the assets of others with a higher degree of care than he does his own. — John Ashcroft

My business affairs are entirely proper, and no amount of smear, rumour or innuendo will alter that fact. — Michael Ashcroft

There is no priority higher than the prevention of terrorism. — John Ashcroft

I don't know if I have a problem expressing joy, but the difficulty is in making an album, a piece of music that really does reflect life rather than the one dimension. I have a problem in trying to make a complete trip record. — Richard Ashcroft

The transmission of values from one generation to the next is the single most important task of the society. ... What am I doing to shape the values of the society? — John Ashcroft

The Internet provides very serious challenges to our ability to keep from children the kinds of things that are destructive to them. — John Ashcroft

A calculated, malignant, devastating evil has arisen in our world, ... Civilization cannot ignore the wrongs that have been done. America will not tolerate their being repeated. Justice has a new mission, a new calling against an old evil. — John Ashcroft

No sex, huh? That sucks, cause I'd love to have sex with you. — Blue Ashcroft

Attorney General John Ashcroft said there is a new credible terrorist threat. He said everything is under control; not to panic. And then he went back to his harmonically sealed bunker. — Jay Leno

But I am scared. Everybody's scared."
"You know what I mean, like scared scared. Like coward scared, like if you never went to begin with. But with everything you've done nobody's going to doubt you." Then she made a somewhat frantic speech about a website she found that listed how certain people had avoided Vietnam. Cheney, Four education deferments, then a hardship 3-A. Limbaugh,4-F thanks to a cyst on his ass. Pat Buchanan, 4-F. Newt Gingrich, grad school deferment. Karl Rove, did not serve. Bill O'Reilly, did not serve. John Ashcroft, did not serve. Bush, AWOL from the Air National Guard, with a check mark in the "do not volunteer" box as to service overseas.
"You see where I'm going with this?'
"Well, yeah."
"I'm just saying, those people want a war so bad, they can fight it themselves. Billy Lynn's done his part. — Ben Fountain

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. — John Ashcroft

I am not saying I will vote against John Ashcroft because he is pro-life, .. But let me say if someone was nominated for attorney general who was vehemently pro choice
who in his or her career spent decades trying to find ways to expand the law abortion at nine months would be perfectly legal
wouldn't you be more upset and raise more of a voice than against a nominee who was simply pro-choice?. — Charles Schumer

First Amendment freedoms are most in danger when the government seeks to control thought or to justify its laws for that impermissible end. The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of thought.
[Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition (00-795), 198 F.3d 1083, affirmed.] — Anthony M. Kennedy

A Pakistan businessman is claiming that John Walker Lindh is gay and that he was his lover. Say what you will about Lindh, but when this guy goes to play for the other team - he goes all the way ... So Lindh may be both a terrorist and a gay man. That may be John Ashcroft's worst nightmare. — Jay Leno

The Patriot Act allows and provides a basis for an exchange of information. — John Ashcroft

The second type you have at these parades seems to be the people who want to mislabel Hitler. Everybody in the world is Hitler. Bush is Hitler, Ashcroft is Hitler, Rumsfeld is Hitler. The only guy who isn't Hitler is the foreign guy with a mustache dropping people who disagree with him into the wood chipper. He's not Hitler. — Dennis Miller

Unique among the nations, America recognized the source of our character as being godly and eternal, not being civic and temporal. And because we have understood that our source is eternal, America has been different. We have no king but Jesus. — John Ashcroft

If home is where the heart is, then Belize is my home. — Michael Ashcroft

One of the things people don't know about exorcism, is that you can't really use exorcism on things that are older than Christianity. — Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki

In the 1990s, the Lib Dems won a string of byelections at the expense of struggling Conservative governments. Christchurch, Ribble Valley and Eastbourne went straight back to the Tories at the next general election, but the Lib Dems held their later byelection gains - Eastleigh, Newbury and Romsey - in at least two subsequent general elections. — Michael Ashcroft

What did John Ashcroft say about moderates, he said, quote, there are two things you find in the middle of the road, a moderate and a dead skunk and I don't want to be either, — John Ashcroft

We've got to understand that the whole nature of the way American democracy guards its freedom has been changed. — John Ashcroft

For the first time in a long time, our leaders in Washington understand what Americans of all religious backgrounds have long held to be true: through faith, all things are possible. — John Ashcroft

To those who scare peace loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: your tactics 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. — John Ashcroft

The Conservatives do not want to go into an election with the leaders' relative ratings as they are - but it is depressing to hear that plans are afoot to paint Miliband as the Michael Dukakis of British politics: part of a metropolitan elite with no understanding of mainstream concerns. — Michael Ashcroft

Sound is the basis vibration of the universe All those little vortices may get sent going the other way. Sound is really very powerful. — Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki

Women and our right to choose were going to be challenged with Ashcroft around. When Bush appointed Ashcroft, I went out and got me four abortions. I stocked up. The doctor was like, "Listen, you're not pregnant." I said, "Hey, just shut up and do your job. I'm exercising my right while I can, dammit. — Wanda Sykes

Ashcroft went on to say that our way of life is being threatened by a group of radical religious fanatics who are armed and dangerous. And then he called for prayers in the schools and an end to gun control. — Jay Leno

Leaders select noble objectives and pursue them with such intensity that others join them. ... The greatest of all leaders from this perspective was Jesus Christ. ... May your choices be so powerful and magnetic that you'll draw people toward life (Duet. 30:19, ... therefore choose life.-) rather than death, blessing rather than cursing. — John Ashcroft

Many people supported the Conservatives because of David Cameron, while many people supported Labour despite Ed Miliband. Deteriorating opinions of Cameron will therefore have a bigger impact on the Conservatives' vote share than worsening views of Miliband would have on Labour's. — Michael Ashcroft

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." — John Ashcroft

People want to see other people who have 'non-negotiables,' things for which they're willing to say, 'This is it' we take our stand right here.' That's a leadership quality which people respect. — John Ashcroft