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.
BARNEY FRANKTake free speech: most of the tough cases on free speech involve very unpleasant people saying very obnoxious things.
More Barney Frank Quotes
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The issue is not that morals be applied to public policy, it’s that conservatives bring public policy to spheres of our lives where it should not enter.
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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 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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Conservatives believe that from the standpoint of the federal government, life begins at conception and ends at birth.
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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.
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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.
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I should have voted for the first Iraq war. George Bush did that one very well. I had been skeptical. I was afraid that George Bush was going to treat the first Iraq war the way his son treated the second.
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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.
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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.
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I believe it is a good thing to get rid of Gaddafi. But does America have to do everything?
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Nothing in the world is as mobile as capital. It can move anywhere in the world instantaneously.
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Martin Luther King said, and it is sadly still true, that one of the most segregated times in America is the hour of worship.
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Legislators have a formal set of responsibilities to work together, but there’s no hierarchy.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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For most of my life, I have eaten to deal with stress.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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People are entitled to the presumption of innocence.
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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.
BARNEY FRANK