167 Quotes by Barney Frank

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

I was still closeted, but from the day I decided to run for office, knowing that I was gay, I decided that I would, of course, still be closeted but that I would work very hard for gay rights. It would be totally dishonorable, being gay, not to do that. So I had that as kind of a secondary agenda.

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

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 the 60 votes to allow themselves to leave the building.

The left and the right live in parallel universes. The right listens to talk radio, the left's on the Internet and they just reinforce one another. They have no sense of reality. I have now one ambition: to retire before it becomes essential to tweet.

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.

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.

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

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.