Susan Collins Quotes

Preventing terrorist attacks is of the highest important, but trashing the Constitution is not the right way to do it.

I don't think anybody else from my generation had federal agents standing at their door with a badge and a gun, saying: 'You are going to answer my questions'.

I support security at the borders. I think security is enormously important in the post-September 11th period. I think we have to know who's coming into this country. We have to be able to identify them; we have to be able to figure out who they are.

Let no man think we can deny civil liberty to others and retain it for ourselves. When zealous agents of the Government arrest suspected "radicals" without warrant, hold them without prompt trial, deny them access to counsel and admission of bail....we have shorn the Bill of Rights of its sanctity.

I have many things to say. My every right, constitutional, civil, political and judicial has been tramped upon. I have not only had no jury of my peers, but I have had no jury at all.

Al-Awlaki was born here, he is an American citizen. He was never tried or charged for any crimes. No one knows if he killed anybody. We know he might have been associated with the underwear bomber. But if the American people accept this blindly and casually that we now have an accepted practice of the president assassinating people who he thinks are bad guys, I think it's sad.

If you are accused of being associated with terrorism, which could mean you are an Arab- American and you've sent e-mails to a relative in the Middle East, you should get your day in court, and I think you should get a lawyer and a trial, and I think most Americans agree to that.

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.

I agree, and a lot of people even within my own party want to give certain rights to people on watch lists and no- fly lists.

I don't think anyone sees truth for a simple reason: we aren't static.

I think this group of people came together in a way that they haven't before in 2007. I'm very optimistic we can do something ... I want to get there, I want to support this.

I don't know whither we are drifting, but I do know where every real thinking patriot will stand in the end, and that's by the Constitution.

He’s gone, Harry told himself. He’s gone. He had to keep thinking it as he washed and dressed, as though repetition would dull the shock of it. He’s gone and he’s not coming back. And that was the simple truth of it, Harry knew, because their protective enchantments meant that it would be impossible, once they vacated this spot, for Ron to find them again.

Many of the best traps are simple. You just have to think about it, and hope your victim doesn't.

I think you have to repudiate torture and I think you have to end what's going on at Guantanamo and you have to live up to American values. Basically you restore - what the American dream brought to the world stage was respect for the individual and the idea that people aren't pawns that rulers can push around but they have rights.

Please give us a simple answer, so that we don't have to think, because if we think, we might find answers that don't fit the way we want the world to be

I fully support Donald Trump and Mike Pence administration. I think they're going to do a lot of great things very quickly.

So when people tell you, oh, you can't have the Ten Commandments on public property, they're just wrong. It's historically false. It's not true. Now, you can decide to invent a new America in which you shouldn't say "one nation under God" as part of the pledge because, after all, you will offend three atheists. But that's not the America you inherited. That's a different country. And I think it's a weaker country and I think it's a country that has no roots in terms of where its rights come from.

The First Amendment's language leaves no room for inference that abridgments of speech and press can be made just because they are slight. That Amendment provides, in simple words, that "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." I read "no law . . . abridging" to mean no law abridging.

Then not everything is gonna be the way you think it oughta be. It seems like everytime I try to make it right, it all comes down on me. Please say honestly you won't give up on me, and I shall believe.

I don't think anyone has ever announced running for president that they want to change the Bill of Rights.

We think only through the medium of words. Languages are true analytical methods. Algebra, which is adapted to its purpose in every species of expression, in the most simple, most exact, and best manner possible, is at the same time a language and an analytical method. The art of reasoning is nothing more than a language well arranged.

I think some of you have to go through the pain of being rejected, the pain of being attacked on television, and ultimately there are people at home who are rooting for you and are wondering why more people don't defend what they stand up for.

When the ACLU took my case and we got a ruling I think, for the first time, they could - the Congress could put out the report internally but they couldn't put it out at taxpayers' expense around the country. And I felt odd about that because I, in a way, I was interfering with free speech, but then, you can't always win.

We need not throw away 200 years of American jurisprudence while we fight terrorism. We need not choose between our most deeply held values, and keeping this nation safe.