The problem with the war in Iraq is not so much the intelligence as the stupidity.
BARNEY FRANKWhen 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.
More Barney Frank Quotes
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Serving in Congress is like having a second shot at high school.
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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.
BARNEY FRANK -
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.
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.
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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 -
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.
BARNEY FRANK -
In the debate between those who believe in essentially unregulated markets and others who hold that reasonable regulation diminishes market excesses without inhibiting their basic function, the subprime situation unfortunately provides ammunition for the latter view.
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 -
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.
BARNEY FRANK -
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.
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 -
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.
BARNEY FRANK -
Going before an audience of people who expect you to be funny is tough. Going before an audience that expect you to be boring, and then being a little funny, is much easier. I prefer easier.
BARNEY FRANK -
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.
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