Barney Frank Quotes

The most active people in the country know different things, and because each one tends to hear mostly and deal mostly with people with whom they agree, they are reinforced not simply in the conviction that they are right, which is totally appropriate, but that they are the majority. So you have both sides, the Left and the Right, thinking that the majority of the country is really with them.

Moderate Republicans are reverse Houdinis. They tie themselves up in knots and then tell you they can’t do anything because they’re tied up in knots.

Well, many of us believe that excessive media concentration is a subject that ought to be addressed, and it is, of course, the intention of the majority party not to allow that to be discussed.

But here too it should be noted that the President's approach was to first ask the repressive and brutal Taliban to surrender Osama bin Laden to us, and only after that government refused to do that did we invade.

I will tell you, I'm a lousy cook, but I think I'm a pretty good judge of a good meal.

I was still closeted, but from the day I decided to run for office, knowing that I was gay, I decided that I would, of course, still be closeted but that I would work very hard for gay rights. It would be totally dishonorable, being gay, not to do that. So I had that as kind of a secondary agenda.

I hope we will not so characterize religious people as being so narrow and so biased towards people not of their own religion that they cannot even work with them in this common cause to which you say they are committed.

Before this learning experience, I had assumed that with regard to programs that sought to help people out of poverty, the political world was essentially divided into two camps: conservatives who opposed these for a variety of reasons, and liberals who supported them.

Ronald Reagan got a lot of democrats. I wish he hadn`t. I got to Congress with Reagan coming to the Whitehouse. The Reagan Program, a very radical one, a very drastic one passed because he had a lot of democrats. He worked at it personally and also because Reagan retained a popularity.

The public is ready now for a safety net for the middle class, something not just for the poor, but for everyone who will need help, from time to time, in order to own a home, educate their kids, keep themselves healthy or have something to retire on.

Regarding homophobia in general, the good news is that there is a lot less of it than there used to be. The bad news is that it ever existed in the first place, and the worse news is that it remains far stronger than is healthy for a society dedicated in theory to equality under the law.

Whenever people are being intellectually dishonest in debate, it is an implicit concession they have lost the fight

Lawyers are very, very good at keeping you out of prison, but they will sacrifice your reputation and credibility to do so.

The people who started the American government, the founders of the Constitution, didn't like political parties but they were forced to start them. Nobody ever created political parties in England, they evolved. And there do tend to be two general tendencies that focus around how much government you think you need.

In the West everybody recognizes the need for a private sector, pretty much, even the one Socialist group understands this now, and so there tends to be debate about how much public sector intervention you think is needed for a variety of reasons, and there are very important differences on party lines that should be fought out.

For the trustees to turn away from the entirely reasonable request of the students that a hearing-impaired individual be made president of the college is a very unfortunate expression of insensitivity.

There is a correlation between people who attack same-sex marriage and have difficulty maintaining their own.

When I was here there was still a requirement that students had to swim 50 yards to graduate...because Harry Elkins Widener had drowned with the sinking of the Titanic. And it made me very grateful at the time that he had not gone down in a plane crash.

I think there were two criticisms you can make of Donald Trump`s involvement in the Health Care Bill. First of all, there were times when he wasn`t being helpful. Secondly, there were times when he was trying to be helpful. I`m not sure which one did more damage.

Can I say one other thing that`s very important? I`m indebted to Donald Trump for a long time, we`ve had this problem that people disliked government. And the health care bill has shown reminded people and Donald Trump has shown people there is something a lot worse than government. It`s not government. That as bad as they might have thought the government was on health care, it`s now created people that the absence of government healthcare is even worse.

If people knew of ethics violations, they should have sent them to the Ethics Committee. If you think there was serious ethics violation that ought to be looked at, you don't hold it back for retaliatory purposes.

The single most important thing you can do politically for gay rights is to come out. Not to write a letter to your congressman but to come out.

NATO was a wonderful idea. It was formed in 1949. We are as far away from NATO as NATO was when it was done in time from the presidency of Grover Cleveland.

Most people who are activists and are concerned about issues get their information from sources which reinforce their opinions and give them the facts that they want to hear.

But on those occasions when I do strongly disagree with the Democrats and I don't say anything, I think I forfeit my right to have people pay attention to me when I say the things that I don't like about what Republicans are saying.

Particularly marijuana, I think is a great hypocrisy. I think frankly it contributes to a good deal of the sense of unfairness you have among younger people who are told they shouldn't do this because it’s got all these negative effects, but then older people are engaging in all kinds of things that probably have a greater impact on people.

Community action is as valuable a principle on the international level as it has been domestically.

If you care deeply about a cause and you are then engaged on behalf of that cause in an activity that makes you feel very good and very brave and you're really in solidarity with all your friends, and you're enjoying it, you're probably not advancing the cause very much, because you're spending all your time with people you agree with cheering each other on and not engaging.

[Democrats] are trying on every front to increase the role of government.

The Moral Majority supports legislators who oppose abortions but also oppose child nutrition and day care. From their perspective, life begins at conception and ends at birth.

Alec Baldwin has done this great Donald Trump. I wish somebody would hire Leslie Jordan to play Jeff Sessions. The only way is to put the two of them out there. it is the most bizarre, pathetic silliness I can imagine at what should be the most serious deliberations in the American government.

For many of those who had historically supported welfare programs in the broadest sense, it was perfectly reasonable to enact legislation in which poor people were the objects of efforts to assist them.

And unless you think there is a serious chance you're going to jail, don't listen to your lawyer.

While I was pleasantly surprised by the relatively high number of jobs created in April, the fact is that job creation during this recovery period has significantly lagged both historical experience in recovery, and the projections of the Bush Administration.

A leader can`t move a country that`s not ready. You can`t make the waves, but when you see them coming, you can help direct them.

The left and the right live in parallel universes. The right listens to talk radio, the left's on the Internet and they just reinforce one another. They have no sense of reality. I have now one ambition: to retire before it becomes essential to tweet.

Excessive partisanship is the problem. There has never been a democracy in the history of the world in a polity of any size where you didn't have political parties. Even sometimes over the objections of the people who started it.

When community action was put into federal law in the early sixties as part of the effort to combat poverty and social injustice, I supported it intellectually.

The best antidote to prejudice is reality.

I can tell you about health care and also about the financial reform bill. The Barack Obama, the President personally and his administration officials at his direction were very much involved.

We all have the right to call each other names. Rudeness is a deeply held constitutional value.

Ridicule is about the most powerful weapon possible.

It seems to me that politicians ought to use the same words as other people.

But it is also clear that left entirely untouched by public policy, the capitalist system will produce more inequality than is socially healthy or than is necessary for maximum efficiency.