Barney Frank: In the debate between those who believe in essentially u...

The best humor is offered up to you by the stupidity of your opponents.

Barney Frank

opponents stupidity

The Moral Majority supports legislators who oppose abortions but also oppose child nutrition and day care. From their perspective, life begins at conception and ends at birth.

Barney Frank

day-care party children

These two entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are not facing any kind of financial crisis. The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.

Barney Frank

affordable-housing two people

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

perspective decision power

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

vote one-day fire

These two entities—Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—are not facing any kind of financial crisis.

Barney Frank

financial kind two

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 produce healthy

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

If you care deeply about a cause and you are then engaged on behalf of that cause in an activity that makes you feel very good and very brave and you're really in solidarity with all your friends, and you're enjoying it, you're probably not advancing the cause very much, because you're spending all your time with people you agree with cheering each other on and not engaging.

Barney Frank

cheer brave people

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

senior light country

The best antidote to prejudice is reality.

Barney Frank

antidote prejudice reality

They have to convert our agenda into something aggressive. Two guys wanting to be happy together are invading their marriages. Helping a kid who's getting beaten up in school is promoting homosexuality. If you gave me a million dollars, I wouldn't know how to promote homosexuality.

Barney Frank

two kids school

Particularly marijuana, I think is a great hypocrisy. I think frankly it contributes to a good deal of the sense of unfairness you have among younger people who are told they shouldn't do this because it’s got all these negative effects, but then older people are engaging in all kinds of things that probably have a greater impact on people.

Barney Frank

marijuana impact thinking

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

practice-of-medicine marijuana doctors

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

yield doe long

[Democrats] are trying on every front to increase the role of government.

Barney Frank

roles government trying

Most people who are activists and are concerned about issues get their information from sources which reinforce their opinions and give them the facts that they want to hear.

Barney Frank

issues giving people

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

The single most important thing you can do politically for gay rights is to come out. Not to write a letter to your congressman but to come out.

Barney Frank

gay rights writing

I do have things I would like to see adopted on behalf of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people: they include the right to marry the individual of our choice; the right to serve in the military to defend our country; and the right to a job based solely on our own qualifications. I acknowledge that this is an agenda, but 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

military jobs country

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.