dates and 2001

How do you write a BETWEEN retrieval statement that works for dates which span the century mark? I have tried

SELECT the_date_field
FROM the_table
WHERE TO_CHAR(the_date_field, 'mm/dd/yyyy') BETWEEN '06/12/1994' AND '06/12/2003'
;

But it only returns dates up through the end of the current century. Received on Fri Dec 09 1994 - 18:20:34 CET