Quotes from James Comey

Senator Schumer is a partisan.

The need for reflection and restraint of power is what led Louis Freeh to order that all new agent classes visit the Holocaust Museum here in Washington so they could see and feel and hear in a palpable way the consequences of abuse of power on a massive, almost unimaginable scale.

Undisclosed and illegal payments, kickbacks, and bribes became a way of doing business at FIFA.

The diverse threats we face are increasingly cyber-based. Much of America's most sensitive data is stored on computers. We are losing data, money, and ideas through cyber intrusions. This threatens innovation and, as citizens, we are also increasingly vulnerable to losing our personal information.

Law enforcement's biased view of the Irish lives on in the nickname we still use for the vehicles we use to transport groups of prisoners. It is, after all, the 'paddy wagon.' The Irish had tough times, but little compares to the experience on our soil of black Americans.

The Internet is the most dangerous parking lot imaginable. But if you were crossing a mall parking lot late at night, your entire sense of danger would be heightened. You would stand straight. You'd walk quickly. You'd know where you were going. You would look for light.

I'm a big fan of the rule of law.

I was born into an Irish Catholic family in the New York area in this great, wonderful, and safe country, but the Holocaust has always haunted me, and it has long stood as a stumbling block to faith. How could such a thing be? How is that consistent with the concept of a loving God?

We have built as a government something called the National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force, NCIJTF, where 19 federal agencies sit together and divide up the work. See the threat, see the challenge, divide it up and share information

Folks are wandering around that proverbial parking lot of the Internet all day long, without giving it a thought to whose attachments they're opening, what sites they're visiting. And that makes it easy for the bad guys.

My wife Patrice, in addition to being enormously supportive, has taught me a lot about life. She might argue it's because I have so much to learn. One of the most important things I've learned is the art of listening.

People view the police not as allies, but as antagonists, and think of them not with respect or gratitude, but with suspicion and distrust.

Some believe that the FBI has these phenomenal capabilities to access any information at any time - that we can get what we want, when we want it, by flipping some sort of switch. It may be true in the movies or on TV. It is simply not the case in real life.

The people of the FBI are sworn to protect both security and liberty. It isn't a question of conflict. We must care deeply about protecting liberty through due process of law, while also safeguarding the citizens we serve - in every investigation.

We can only query against that which we have collected. And so if someone has never made a ripple in the pond in Syria in a way that would get their identity or their interest reflected in our database, we can query our database until the cows come home, but there will be nothing show up because we have no record of them.

The Internet offers the ability for people to consume poison and radicalize entirely in private, either through a device they're holding in their hands or inside their house.

After years of police work, officers often can't help but be influenced by the cynicism they feel.

I don't know if it's true or not that folks are less likely to tell police when they see things.

There's a perception that police are less likely to do the marginal additional policing that suppresses crime: the getting out of your car at 2 in the morning and saying to a group of guys, 'What are you doing here?'

Stuff doesn't matter - boats, cars, fancy things don't matter. What matters, what will matter to me, is the love of the people around me, and did I take a chance? Did I seize an opportunity to do something for people with the talents that I was lucky enough to be given? Did I make a difference in the lives of people who needed me?

If you've ever talked to a special agent that you know well, and you ask he or she about a dangerous encounter they were involved in, they'll almost always give you the same answer: 'Yeah, I did it, but I was scared to heck the whole time.'

What makes the bravery of the men and women of the FBI so special is that they know exactly what they're in for. They spend weeks and weeks in an academy learning just how hard and dangerous this work is. Then they raise their right hands and take an oath and do that work anyway.

Prosecutors necessarily weigh a number of factors before bringing charges. There are obvious considerations, like the strength of the evidence, especially regarding intent. Responsible decisions also consider the context of a person's actions and how similar situations have been handled in the past.

I saw something in the news, so I copied it. I put a piece of tape - I have obviously a laptop, personal laptop - I put a piece of tape over the camera. Because I saw somebody smarter than I am had a piece of tape over their camera.