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.
BARNEY FRANKWhenever people are being intellectually dishonest in debate, it is an implicit concession they have lost the fight
More Barney Frank Quotes
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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.
BARNEY FRANK -
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.
BARNEY FRANK -
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.
BARNEY FRANK -
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.
BARNEY FRANK -
Legislators have a formal set of responsibilities to work together, but there’s no hierarchy.
BARNEY FRANK -
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.
BARNEY FRANK -
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.
BARNEY FRANK -
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.
BARNEY FRANK -
The problem with the war in Iraq is not so much the intelligence as the stupidity.
BARNEY FRANK -
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.
BARNEY FRANK -
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.
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I will tell you, I’m a lousy cook, but I think I’m a pretty good judge of a good meal.
BARNEY FRANK -
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.
BARNEY FRANK -
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.
BARNEY FRANK -
Nothing in the world is as mobile as capital. It can move anywhere in the world instantaneously.
BARNEY FRANK






