Barney Frank Quotes

Donald Trump has done more for getting people to understand the importance of public policy that respond to public needs in an affirmative way than anything we could have done on our own.

The fact that theyre a congressionally chartered group should no more incline people to give to that group than the fact that its National Pickle Month should make them eat more pickles.

I do not believe that the federal government should treat adults who choose to smoke marijuana as criminals.

Bush senior used to say that we have more will than wallet. So he urged the country to attack poverty with a thousand points of light, none of which could be eaten.

Trying to avert foreclosures, once you can't just force the banks to do it as a condition of getting aid, means that you have to put some public money into it or you have to do other things that are politically unpopular. From the macroeconomic standpoint there is overwhelming need to help people reduce what they owe so that we don't get the foreclosures and we don't get people kicked out of their homes. On the other hand, there is great resistance politically to helping people, not all of whom would be worth recipients of the help.

There were a lot of Romneys. There's the Romney who was going to be better on gay rights than Ted Kennedy; now there's a Romney who checks with Rick Santorum on that issue.

What's troubling is that the Republicans to defend Mr. DeLay are weakening the ethics process.

Conservatives believe that from the standpoint of the federal government, life begins at conception and ends at birth.

This bill is the legislative equivalent of crack. It yields a short-term high but does long-term damage to the system and it's expensive to boot.

Take free speech: most of the tough cases on free speech involve very unpleasant people saying very obnoxious things.

The rights of the people who have done terrible things are hard to defend. You have to keep pointing out, the question is the process to determine whether they've done the terrible things.

It is because the fight against the harshest aspects of unrestricted capitalism is therefore a political problem and not an intellectual one that community action remains so essential.

But when others suggested that the poor should not simply be the objects of these programs but also the subjects - that they should be actively involved in shaping the programs, making decisions about how to spend the money etc. - some of the previous supporters reconsidered.

Martin Luther King said, and it is sadly still true, that one of the most segregated times in America is the hour of worship.

The problem with the war in Iraq is not so much the intelligence as the stupidity.

I believe it is a good thing to get rid of Gaddafi. But does America have to do everything?

There was a degree of interventionism in American foreign policy, the notion that we must be the superpower and we have to intervene everywhere, that I think makes no sense.

Ronald Reagan believes in the free market like some people believe in unicorns.

I have this fear that one day there's going to be a fire in the Senate and there are only going to be 57 senators there and they’ll all die because they won't have 60 votes to allow themselves to leave the building.

There is parallels these two great men John McCain and Ted Kennedy of great impact in the Senate, you don`t agree with everything they did but certainly they had major impacts as senators. Their one major political failure not to be elected president but that didn`t stop them from having enormous impact and at roughly the same age, exactly the same disease. It`s kind of a poignant sad parallel.

I'm used to being in the minority. I'm a left-handed, gay Jew. I've never felt, automatically, a member of any majority.

There is an irony that the most active anti-gay groups are Al-Qaeda and the American Right wing.

I am not aware of any specific provision that mandates any tightening of lending to small business other than a requirement that people who lend and then sell that loan be prepared to take a part of the risk. And I'm proud of that.

Serving in Congress is like having a second shot at high school.

Legislators have a formal set of responsibilities to work together, but there's no hierarchy.

These two entities—Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—are not facing any kind of financial crisis.

In America, unlike England, unlike Israel, unlike Japan, other democracies, we have elections that have staggered terms.

I wouldn't want [gay marriage] to go to the United States Supreme Court now because that homophobe Antonin Scalia has too many votes on this current court.

For most of my life, I have eaten to deal with stress.

We don't get ourselves dry cleaned.

One of the striking things and Donald Trump is right, he gets no Democratic votes. It`s interesting there were Democrats from states some of them more conservative states that voted him, Indiana, Missouri, West Virginia, Montana, North Dakota. They`re not afraid of Donald Trump those Democratic Senators because they know more than he knows and know what the people want.

They appear to have become so attached to their outrage that they are even more outraged that they won't be able to be outraged anymore.

I think there was an absolute, deep gap between consensual relations between adults, which people may like or dislike, and people who physically impose themselves on children or misuse their authority to impose on children.

Let us not say that we will decide on a political basis at the national level that no State is competent to regulate the practice of medicine in that State if they decide to allow a doctor to prescribe marijuana, because that is what we are talking about.

And I think there is too much bloviating around from politicians.

They have to convert our agenda into something aggressive. Two guys wanting to be happy together are invading their marriages. Helping a kid who's getting beaten up in school is promoting homosexuality. If you gave me a million dollars, I wouldn't know how to promote homosexuality.

Today, many people take for granted the notion that people whose lives are going to be very heavily affected by public policies should have a say in how they are formulated and carried out.

Capitalism works better from every perspective when the economic decision makers are forced to share power with those who will be affected by those decisions.

I smoke a cigar or two a day. I did have a brownie once. It made me sleepy.

People are entitled to the presumption of innocence.

I don't think Donald Trump is the right person because I very much disagree with him.

It is, of course, further indication that a fundamentalist right has really taken over much of the Republican Party, People might cite George Bush as proof that you can be totally impervious to the effects of Harvard and Yale education.

If Bob Barr (conservative republican congressman from Georgia) caught on fire and I was holding a bucket of water, it would be great act of discipline to pour it on him. I would do it, but I'd hate myself in the morning.

The best humor is offered up to you by the stupidity of your opponents.

I do not think that any self-respecting radical in history would have considered advocating people’s rights to get married, join the Army, and earn a living as a terribly inspiring revolutionary platform.

I am very proud of the role I played in getting legal equality for people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, and in helping get rid of the prejudice by being visible about it, helping to block the conviction of Bill Clinton of impeachment.

Increasing inequality in income distribution in this country has broader policy implications, and there is also the growing problem of perverse incentives that result from executives receiving grossly disproportionate compensation based on decisions they themselves take.

I have been mislabeled as a big advocate of low-income home ownership over rental.