John Ashcroft

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.

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

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

The judge said I was a menace to society because I had put crime on a scientific basis.

For a while, I became an atheist; now that I'm grown up, though, I'm not hard-edged enough to be an atheist. Even though I live with a flaming atheist, I love going to temple. I love all the rituals.

I like villains because there's something so attractive about a committed person - they have a plan, an ideology, no matter how twisted. They're motivated.