Barney Frank Quotes

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.
BARNEY FRANK

Care Financial President
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

Doe Long Yield
The best humor is offered up to you by the stupidity of your opponents.
BARNEY FRANK

Humor Opponents Stupidity
I believe it is a good thing to get rid of Gaddafi. But does America have to do everything?
BARNEY FRANK

Believe Country Good Thing
I don’t think Donald Trump is the right person because I very much disagree with him.
BARNEY FRANK

Persons Thinking Trump
I do not believe that the federal government should treat adults who choose to smoke marijuana as criminals.
BARNEY FRANK

Believe Government Marijuana
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

Criticism Thinking Trying
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

Efficiency Healthy Produce
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

Government Hurt People
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

Aquarium Community Fighting
And unless you think there is a serious chance you’re going to jail, don’t listen to your lawyer.
BARNEY FRANK

Jail Serious Thinking
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

Funny Graduation Grateful Swim
Martin Luther King said, and it is sadly still true, that one of the most segregated times in America is the hour of worship.
BARNEY FRANK

Country Kings Worship
Ronald Reagan believes in the free market like some people believe in unicorns.
BARNEY FRANK

Believe People Unicorn
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

Effort People Programs Welfare
It is, of course, further indication that a fundamentalist right has really taken over much of the Republican Party, People might cite George Bush as proof that you can be totally impervious to the effects of Harvard and Yale education.
BARNEY FRANK

Party Taken Yale
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

Party People Political
I will tell you, I’m a lousy cook, but I think I’m a pretty good judge of a good meal.
BARNEY FRANK

Judging Meal Thinking
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

Knots Republican Ties
Disruption never helps your cause. … It just looks like you’re afraid to have rational discussion.
BARNEY FRANK

Causes Helping Looks
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

Giving Groups People
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

Afraid Country People Person Son War
Lawyers are very, very good at keeping you out of prison, but they will sacrifice your reputation and credibility to do so.
BARNEY FRANK

Lawyer Reputation Sacrifice
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.
BARNEY FRANK

Bisexual Block Gay
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

Done People Rights
[Democrats] are trying on every front to increase the role of government.
BARNEY FRANK

Government Roles Trying
There is a correlation between people who attack same-sex marriage and have difficulty maintaining their own.
BARNEY FRANK

Maintaining People Sex

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