Eric Holder Quotes

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Eric Holder

Profession : Public Servant

Birth : January 21, 1951

Saturdays and Sundays, America in the year 2009 does not in some ways differ significantly from the country that existed almost 50 years ago. This is truly sad.

Eric Holder

It's a sad indication of where Washington has come, where policy differences almost necessarily become questions of integrity. I came to Washington in the late '70s, and people had the ability in the past to have intense policy differences but didn't feel the need to question the other person's character.

Eric Holder

I still think that we have a hesitance to talk about things racial. And I think we do it at our detriment. We go from incident to incident, and we have spikes in which race becomes something that we talk about, as opposed to talking about race in those less contentious times when I think we might make more progress.

Eric Holder

I understand the Second Amendment. I respect the Second Amendment. I think we need to use common sense tools to keep the American people safe, to keep our streets safe.

Eric Holder

I sit here as the first African-American attorney general, serving the first African-American President of the United States. And that has to show that we have made a great deal of progress. But there's still more we have to travel along this road so we get to the place that is consistent with our founding ideals.

Eric Holder

I think there are too many people in jail for too long and for not necessarily good reasons.

Eric Holder

I don't even talk about whether or not racial profiling is legal. I just don't think racial profiling is a particularly good law enforcement tool.

Eric Holder

When it comes to police officers, I have concerns about the training that they receive. This whole notion of implicit bias, looking at people and having stereotypical reactions to them on the basis of their ethnicity.

Eric Holder

I'm attorney general of the United States. I will not stand for - I will not allow people to take away that which people gave their lives to give, and that is the ability for the American people to vote.

Eric Holder

Communities of color don't understand what it means to be a police officer, the fear that police officers have in just being on the streets.

Eric Holder

The vast majority of law enforcement officers conduct themselves in really honorable, appropriate ways.

Eric Holder

You constantly hear about voter fraud... but you don't see huge amounts of vote fraud out there.

Eric Holder

One cannot understate the importance of eliminating Bin Laden. He was a symbolic head of the organisation and, as we now know, an operational head of the organisation.

Eric Holder

Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards.

Eric Holder

I am not a proponent of the death penalty, but I will enforce the law as this Congress gives it to us.

Eric Holder

Though race-related issues continue to occupy a significant portion of our political discussion, and though there remain many unresolved racial issues in this nation, we, average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about things racial.

Eric Holder

The reality is that we will be reading Miranda rights to the corpse of Osama bin Laden. He will never appear in an American courtroom. That's the reality. He will be killed by us, or he will be killed by his own people so he's not captured by us. We know that.

Eric Holder

I think that what I'm doing is right. And election-year politics, which intensifies everything, is not going to drive me off that course.

Eric Holder

I think that people, despite my law enforcement background, view me as taking these consistently progressive stands, and I think that, philosophically, there is a desire to get at that person. But I think the stands I have taken are totally consistent with a person who is looking at things realistically, factually.

Eric Holder

Any decision to use lethal force against a United States citizen - even one intent on murdering Americans and who has become an operational leader of al-Qaida in a foreign land - is among the gravest that government leaders can face.

Eric Holder