John Ashcroft Quotes

The role of a trustee is to ensure beneficiaries get the best returns, without the trustee benefitting.

What we need is congressional action to establish a federal principle of fiduciary duty - encapsulated by the phrase 'no man can serve two masters.'

The most important thing to me as a practitioner has been fidelity to my obligations and to the law.

We must work to establish a 'fiduciary society,' where manager/agents entrusted with managing other people's money are required - by federal statute - to place front and center the interests of the owners they are duty-bound to serve.

The first definition of gross negligence that comes up when you take out the legal dictionary is being extremely careless. The minute you say someone is extremely careless you are saying they're grossly negligent.

As a brother, a landlord, a master, she considered how many people's happiness were in his guardianship! -- How much of pleasure or pain it was in his power to bestow! -- How much of good or evil must be done by him!

The law and medicine should be very serious professions to undertake, should they not? People's lives and fortunes depend on them.

Chevron has wrapped itself in some pretty good arguments that make you scratch your head. The moral responsibility is certainly at its door. I leave it to other people to figure out whether there's legal responsibility.

Third, and finally, the educated citizen has an obligation to uphold the law. This is the obligation of every citizen in a free and peaceful society--but the educated citizen has a special responsibility by the virtue of his greater understanding. For whether he has ever studied history or current events, ethics or civics, the rules of a profession or the tools of a trade, he knows that only a respect for the law makes it possible for free men to dwell together in peace and progress.

The unhappy theory of business ethics is this: you have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize profit. Period. To do anything other than that is to cheat your investors. And in a competitive world, you don't have much wiggle room here.

To give away money is an easy matter and in any man's power. But to decide to whom to give it and how large and when, and for what purpose and how, is neither in every man's power nor an easy matter.

I cannot guarantee people absolute fairness. I can only promise that I will do everything in my power to secure fairness or create a greater degree of fairness.

Of course no president, Democratic or Republican - no president - is above the law, as neither are you, nor I, nor anyone.

A person should be free to do as he likes in his own concerns; but he ought not to be free to do as he likes in acting for another, under the pretext that the affairs of the other are his own affairs.

In April, I asked my staff to determine if Senate rules and relevant laws would allow me to direct the trustees to sell any remaining HCA stock. In May, my staff worked with outside counsel and with the Senate ethics committee staff to draft a written communication to the trustees. After obtaining pre-approval by mid-June from the Senate ethics committee, I issued a letter directing my trustees to sell any remaining HCA stock in my family's trust.

He invites the commission of a crime who does not forbid it, when it is in his power to do so.

A company and leaders of the company have the responsibility of the precious lives of all the human beings that work there.

Possession properly has two faces, two aspects: we all have a right to private property, but this is accompanied by our responsibility for its righteous use. These two things (which should be inseparable) are frequently divided today. Everyone admits that the farmer who own a horse is obligated to feed and care for it, but in the case of stocks and bonds, we often forget that the same principle should prevail.

Ignorance of the law excuses no man.

I ought to file charges of uncommon stupidity against you for letting her try this alone." ~ Newt, Black Magic Sanction, Kim Harrison

I believe that the officers, and, especially, the directors, of corporations should be held personally responsible when any corporation breaks the law.

Leadership is not about a title, degree or level. Anybody can lead at any time.

If you don't uphold your legal responsibility to enforce the First Amendment, to provide speakers with platforms and audiences with safe, the ability to listen to speakers of all different kinds, agnostic ideology, if you don't do that as a university, you are not performing your essential function.

Money is like a child—rarely unaccompanied. When it disappears, look to those who were supposed to be keeping an eye on it while you were at the grocery store. You might also look for someone who has a lot of extra children sitting around, with long, suspicious explanations for how they got there.