Quotes By Barney Frank

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.

And unless you think there is a serious chance you're going to jail, don't listen to your lawyer.

I will tell you, I'm a lousy cook, but I think I'm a pretty good judge of a good meal.

What would be the nicest thing I could say about Newt Gingrich? He may be one of the great supporters of the humanities, because you have people who don't want to study the social sciences, because it's not profitable, and now Newt, as the highest-paid historian in American history, may be an encouragement to people to study history.

The regulation of medicine has been a State function.

Pat Moynihan could write books with one hand and legislate with the other. I can't; I have a short attention span. The slightest distraction would take me away from writing.

Now, most of the time I'm going to agree with the Democrats and disagree with the Republicans.

In this view, the role of the great majority of Americans is simply to buy the products produced, work happily for their wages, and leave all of the significant economic decisions to the capitalists.

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.

Legislators have a formal set of responsibilities to work together, but there's no hierarchy.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The fact that they're a congressionally chartered group should no more incline people to give to that group than the fact that it's National Pickle Month should make them eat more pickles.

In America, unlike England, unlike Israel, unlike Japan, other democracies, we have elections that have staggered terms.

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.

I have been mislabeled as a big advocate of low-income home ownership over rental.

For most of my life, I have eaten to deal with stress.

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.

Lawyers are very, very good at keeping you out of prison, but they will sacrifice your reputation and credibility to do so.

What's troubling is that the Republicans to defend Mr. DeLay are weakening the ethics process.

And I think there is too much bloviating around from politicians.

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.

I am not a great theologian. I know there is a theological concept called invincible ignorance in which a strong enough faith binds you to any facts to the contrary.

There's a lot to be said for not displacing people.

It seems to me that politicians ought to use the same words as other people.

Community action is as valuable a principle on the international level as it has been domestically.

People are entitled to the presumption of innocence.

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.