John Ashcroft Scar Quotations

Any citizen who's offended ... can leave the service.

[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.

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.

[Ashcroft vowed to] spare no effort to preserve the rights of all our citizens to pledge allegiance to the American flag.

We're going to protect and honor the Constitution, and I don't have the authority to set it aside.... If I had the authority to set it aside, this would be a dangerous government, and I wouldn't respect it.

Frankly, the president, during the first opportunity I had to be in a Cabinet meeting, before we started the meeting, he said, Folks, before we begin this meeting, I'm going to call on General Ashcroft and ask him invite the wisdom and presence of God in what we do. And I thought to myself how ashamed I'd been that so many times in my life I had entered upon great important tasks and I had cheated myself and those that I had served of a blessing.

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.

To those who pit Americans against immigrants, citizens against non-citizens, 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,

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.