Barney Frank Quotes

The public is ready now for a safety net for the middle class, something not just for the poor, but for everyone who will need help, from time to time, in order to own a home, educate their kids, keep themselves healthy or have something to retire on.
BARNEY FRANK

Home Kids Order
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

Degree Foreign Policy Thinking
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

Littles People Tough
People are entitled to the presumption of innocence.
BARNEY FRANK

Entitled Innocence People Presumption
For most of my life, I have eaten to deal with stress.
BARNEY FRANK

Dealing Eaten Life Stress
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

Better Country Gay Rights
And I think there is too much bloviating around from politicians.
BARNEY FRANK

Much Politician Thinking Too
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

Fire One Day Vote
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

Believe Excess Views
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

Children People Thinking
There is an irony that the most active anti-gay groups are Al-Qaeda and the American Right wing.
BARNEY FRANK

Gay Groups Wings
Whenever people are being intellectually dishonest in debate, it is an implicit concession they have lost the fight
BARNEY FRANK

Debate Fighting People
Today, many people take for granted the notion that people whose lives are going to be very heavily affected by public policies should have a say in how they are formulated and carried out.
BARNEY FRANK

Affected Grant People Policy Public
There are no moderate Republicans left, with the exception of a few who would vote with us when it doesn’t make any difference,” Frank said. “It’s the most rigid ideological party since before the Civil War. … The bumper sticker I’m going to have printed up for Democrats this year is, ‘We’re not perfect, but they’re nuts.’
BARNEY FRANK

Party War Years
These two entities—Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—are not facing any kind of financial crisis.
BARNEY FRANK

Financial Kind Two
Let us not say that we will decide on a political basis at the national level that no State is competent to regulate the practice of medicine in that State if they decide to allow a doctor to prescribe marijuana, because that is what we are talking about.
BARNEY FRANK

Doctors Marijuana Medicine Practice
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

Jobs Numbers Recovery
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

Community Effort Law
The problem with the war in Iraq is not so much the intelligence as the stupidity.
BARNEY FRANK

Country Stupidity War
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.
BARNEY FRANK

People Prejudice Religious
Before this learning experience, I had assumed that with regard to programs that sought to help people out of poverty, the political world was essentially divided into two camps: conservatives who opposed these for a variety of reasons, and liberals who supported them.
BARNEY FRANK

People Political Two
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

Cleveland Done Ideas
Legislators have a formal set of responsibilities to work together, but there’s no hierarchy.
BARNEY FRANK

Hierarchy Responsibility Together Working
In America, unlike England, unlike Israel, unlike Japan, other democracies, we have elections that have staggered terms.
BARNEY FRANK

Country Democrats Staggered
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

Decision Perspective Power
Nothing in the world is as mobile as capital. It can move anywhere in the world instantaneously.
BARNEY FRANK

Mobile Moving World
I smoke a cigar or two a day. I did have a brownie once. It made me sleepy.
BARNEY FRANK

Cigar Sleepy Two

Other Famous Personalities