Top 100 James Comey Quotes (2026 Update)
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51. “He did not tolerate fools and had an ever-expanding definition of those who fit that category.”

— James Comey

52. “I was struck by the way he could see and evaluate a variety of angles on a complicated issue.”

— James Comey

53. “I was intentionally wearing a gold tie so I wasn’t displaying either of the normal political gang colors, red or blue.”

— James Comey

54. “Speaking uphill takes courage. It takes overcoming a universal human affliction – the impostor complex.”

— James Comey

55. “Getting problems, pain, hopes, and doubts out on the table so we can talk honestly about them and work to improve is the best way to lead.”

— James Comey

56. “It may sound strange, but throughout my five months working under Donald Trump, I wanted him to succeed as president. That’s not a political bias. Had Hillary Clinton been elected, I would have wanted her to succeed as president. I think that’s what it means to love your country. We need our presidents to succeed.”

— James Comey

57. “Judgment is the ability to orbit a problem or a set of facts and see it as it might be seen through other eyes, by observers with different biases, motives, and backgrounds.”

— James Comey

58. “As strange as it might sound, there is a certain freedom in being totally screwed, in knowing you will be attacked no matter what you do. Half the country will howl either way, so tune out the critics and let only the facts and the law dictate which half.”

— James Comey

59. “There was once a time when most people worried about going to hell if they violated an oath taken in the name of God. That divine deterrence has slipped away from our modern cultures. In its place, people must fear going to jail.”

— James Comey

60. “Together, the three of us chewed over all hard decisions, like the old friends we were – laughing, teasing, arguing. I valued them because they would always tell me the truth, including when I was full of it.”

— James Comey

61. “The more stressful the job, the more intentional I’ve always been about helping my team members find joy in our work. Laughter is the outward manifestation of joy, so I believe if I’m doing it right, and helping people connect to the meaning and joy in their work, there will be laughter in the workplace. Laughter is also a good indication that people aren’t taking themselves too seriously.”

— James Comey

62. “Our investigation required us to answer two questions. The first question was whether classified documents were moved outside of classified systems or whether classified topics were discussed outside of a classified system. If so, the second question was what the subject of the investigation was thinking when she mishandled that classified information.”

— James Comey

63. “Donald Trump’s presidency threatens much of what is good in this nation. We all bear responsibility for the deeply flawed choices put before voters during the 2016 election, and our country is paying a high price: this president is unethical, and untethered to truth and institutional values. His leadership is transactional, ego driven, and about personal loyalty.”

— James Comey

64. “Somehow, he created an environment that was both demanding and incredibly fun. He suppressed a smile at our silliness – just letting the corner of his mouth turn up slightly so we could see his amusement – and told us bluntly when our work wasn’t good enough. We loved him. But we also feared him, in a healthy way. Because he made us feel important, because he so obviously cared about what he was doing and about us, we desperately wanted to please him.”

— James Comey

65. “Then there were the baffling, unnecessary lies. At one point, for example, the president told me that chief of staff Reince Priebus didn’t know we were meeting, which seemed incredible. The chief of staff should know when the president is dining alone with the FBI director. Then, later on in that same dinner, Trump said casually, “Reince knows we’re meeting.”

— James Comey

66. “WHO AM I TO TELL others what ethical leadership is? Anyone claiming to write a book about ethical leadership can come across as presumptuous, even sanctimonious. All the more so if that author happens to be someone who was quite memorably and publicly fired from his last job.”

— James Comey

67. “In contrast to those Hillary Clinton corresponded with, the author did not have the appropriate clearance or a legitimate need to know the information, which included notes of discussions with President Obama about very sensitive programs.”

— James Comey

68. “Amoral leaders have a way of revealing the character of those around them. Sometimes what they reveal is inspiring. For example, James Mattis, the former secretary of defense, resigned over principle, a concept so alien to Mr. Trump that it took days for the president to realize what had happened, before he could start lying about the man.”

— James Comey

69. “The office has long been accused of considering only one question relevant to its claims of jurisdiction: “Did it happen on the earth?”

— James Comey

70. “The collision between privacy and public safety in the encryption context touches on not just privacy and public safety but also issues of technology, law, economics, philosophy, innovation, and international relations, and probably other interests and values.”

— James Comey

71. “In late July, the FBI learned that a Trump campaign foreign policy advisor named George Papadopoulos had been discussing, months earlier, obtaining from the Russian government emails damaging to Hillary Clinton. Based on this information, the FBI opened an investigation to try to understand whether Americans, including any associated with the Trump campaign, were working in any way with the Russians in their influence effort.”

— James Comey

72. “On July 6, 2015, the Bureau received a referral from the inspector general of the intelligence community, a congressionally created independent office focused on finding risks and vulnerabilities across the nation’s vast intelligence community. The referral raised the issue of whether Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had mishandled classified information while using her personal email system. On July 10, the FBI opened a criminal investigation.”

— James Comey

73. “Tired people tend not to have the best judgment.”

— James Comey

74. “We were very angry. Had Collin been born with another doctor or in another hospital that required testing, he would very likely be alive, because Patrice would have been tested late in pregnancy and treated as she delivered him.”

— James Comey

75. “The president began by admiring his own menu card, which he held up. “They write these things out one at a time, by hand,” he marveled, referring to the White House staff. “A calligrapher,” I replied, nodding. He looked quizzical. “They write them by hand,” he repeated.”

— James Comey

76. “I say this as someone who has worked in law enforcement for most of my life, and served presidents of both parties. What is happening now is not normal. It is not fake news. It is not okay.”

— James Comey

77. “That much confidence – the belief that he personally can solve even the hardest problems – can be worrisome in a leader because it tends to close off other views.”

— James Comey

78. “It is hard for leaders to listen well because it requires us to be vulnerable, to risk our superior position.”

— James Comey

79. “And she also didn’t care much what misinformed people said about her, a lesson I would find very valuable as I grew older.”

— James Comey

80. “I took an emotional call from General John Kelly, then the secretary of Homeland Security. He said he was sick about my firing and that he intended to quit in protest. He said he didn’t want to work for dishonorable people who would treat someone like me in such a manner. I urged Kelly not to do that, arguing that the country needed principled people around this president. Especially this president.”

— James Comey

81. “Bill Clinton ended that fugitive hunt with a stroke of his pen. Now I was the United States Attorney investigating whether that pen stroke had been bought.”

— James Comey

82. “In the movies, some foreboding music might play in the background or the light might dim. But there was none of that. Evil has an ordinary face. It laughs, it cries, it deflects, it rationalizes, it makes great pasta.”

— James Comey

83. “Every word of the statement was reviewed by the FBI legal team to ensure it was consistent with the law and Department of Justice policy.”

— James Comey

84. “The stuff that gets me the most is the claim that I am in love with my own righteousness, my own virtue. I have long worried about my ego.”

— James Comey

85. “I have never seen any indication that Powell discussed on his AOL account information that was classified at the time, but there were numerous examples of Secretary Clinton having done so.”

— James Comey

86. “Even with the misdemeanor, the Department of Justice has long required that investigators develop strong evidence to indicate government employees knew they were doing something improper in their handling of the classified information.”

— James Comey

87. “During high school, I would come home from school and sit with my mom to talk about my day; when she was dying from cancer in 2012 we spoke of those hours. Starting when I was a little boy, she told me much was expected of me. Before she died, my mother showed me a note I had written to her after getting sent to my room at the age of seven or eight. “I am sorry,” the note read. “I will be a great man someday.”

— James Comey

88. “In the time it took for the truth to get its boots on, false information had circled the earth many times.”

— James Comey

89. “They were driven by one of the most powerful and disconcerting forces in human nature – confirmation bias. Our brains have evolved to crave information consistent with what we already believe. We seek out and focus on facts and arguments that support our beliefs.”

— James Comey

90. “There are many leaders, and I’ve known a few in my life, who would have lost it, hurling expletives and accusations at a stupid kid. As Harry looked down at the plastic parts now spread around his wing-tip shoes, he said only, “Clean it up,” and walked away.”

— James Comey

91. “Despite the endless drumbeat in the conservative media, filled with exaggerated scandals and breathless revelations of little practical import, Hillary Clinton’s case, at least as far as we knew at the start, did not appear to come anywhere near General Petraeus’s in the volume and classification level of the material mishandled.”

— James Comey

92. “In Secretary Clinton’s case, the answer to the first question – was classified information mishandled? – was obviously “yes.”

— James Comey

93. “As a leadership principle, if leaders don’t tell the truth, or won’t hear the truth from others, they cannot make good decisions, they cannot themselves improve, and they cannot inspire trust among those who follow them.”

— James Comey

94. “I became the United States Attorney in Manhattan when Ground Zero, where thousands died, still smoldered. Late at night, I would stand at the fence and watch firefighters sift through the dirt to find those lost. Nobody needed to tell me how hard we needed to fight terrorism, but I also understood we had to do it the right way. Under the law.”

— James Comey

95. “She had the confidence to be humble.”

— James Comey

96. “Many Republicans, prodded by self-appointed legal and investigative experts on their favored media outlets, and often reacting to inaccurate or misleading news reporting, seemed certain the former secretary of state had committed the worst crimes since the Rosenbergs gave our nuclear secrets to the Russians in the 1950s and were executed for it.”

— James Comey

97. “Put another way, there were thirty-six email chains about topics that could cause “serious” damage to national security and eight that could be expected to cause “exceptionally grave” damage to the security of the United States if released.”

— James Comey

98. “Her lack of technological sophistication is evident in her memoir, What Happened, in which she seems to intimate that her private server in Chappaqua was protected from hacking because it was contained in a home guarded by the Secret Service. Hacking a server is done through the internet, not by breaking the glass in a basement window.”

— James Comey

99. “Each of my advisers undoubtedly had their own political opinions and views. They were human beings, after all. They also had spouses, friends, or family members who had their own points of view as well. But I didn’t know what those views were. I never heard anyone on our team – not one – take a position that seemed driven by their personal political motivations. And more than that: I never heard an argument or observation I thought came from a political bias. Never.”

— James Comey

100. “The religion department introduced me to the philosopher and theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, whose work resonated with me deeply. Niebuhr saw the evil in the world, understood that human limitations make it impossible for any of us to really love another as ourselves, but still painted a compelling picture of our obligation to try to seek justice in a flawed world.”

— James Comey