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.
BARNEY FRANKI 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.
More Barney Frank Quotes
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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 -
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.
BARNEY FRANK -
Conservatives believe that from the standpoint of the federal government, life begins at conception and ends at birth.
BARNEY FRANK -
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.
BARNEY FRANK -
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.
BARNEY FRANK -
Take free speech: most of the tough cases on free speech involve very unpleasant people saying very obnoxious things.
BARNEY FRANK -
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.
BARNEY FRANK -
It seems to me that politicians ought to use the same words as other people.
BARNEY FRANK -
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 FRANK -
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.
BARNEY FRANK -
In a free society, a large degree of human activity is none of the government’s business. We should make criminal what’s going to hurt other people and other than that we should leave it to people to make their own choices.
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 -
I had always been interested in politics. I had assumed – for two reasons, being Jewish and being gay back in the late ’50s, early ’60s – that I would never be elected or anything, but I would participate as an activist.
BARNEY FRANK -
Serving in Congress is like having a second shot at high school.
BARNEY FRANK -
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.
BARNEY FRANK -
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 FRANK -
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.
BARNEY FRANK -
And I think there is too much bloviating around from politicians.
BARNEY FRANK -
Legislators have a formal set of responsibilities to work together, but there’s no hierarchy.
BARNEY FRANK -
I will tell you, I’m a lousy cook, but I think I’m a pretty good judge of a good meal.
BARNEY FRANK -
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.
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 -
The best humor is offered up to you by the stupidity of your opponents.
BARNEY FRANK -
The best antidote to prejudice is reality.
BARNEY FRANK -
The problem with the war in Iraq is not so much the intelligence as the stupidity.
BARNEY FRANK -
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.
BARNEY FRANK