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Whenever people are being intellectually dishonest in debate, it is an implicit concession they have lost the fight

Barney Frank

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Barney Frank
Age: 84
Born: 1940
Born: March 31
Former U.S. Representative
Politician
Bayonne
New Jersey
Barnett Frank
Lost
Concessions
People
Dishonest
Implicit
Intellectually
Debate
Whenever
Fight
Fighting
Concession

More quotes by Barney Frank

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The people who started the American government, the founders of the Constitution, didn't like political parties but they were forced to start them. Nobody ever created political parties in England, they evolved. And there do tend to be two general tendencies that focus around how much government you think you need.
Barney Frank
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I do not believe that the federal government should treat adults who choose to smoke marijuana as criminals.
Barney Frank
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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
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But here too it should be noted that the President's approach was to first ask the repressive and brutal Taliban to surrender Osama bin Laden to us, and only after that government refused to do that did we invade.
Barney Frank
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And unless you think there is a serious chance you're going to jail, don't listen to your lawyer.
Barney Frank
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What's troubling is that the Republicans to defend Mr. DeLay are weakening the ethics process.
Barney Frank
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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
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We don't get ourselves dry cleaned.
Barney Frank
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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.
Barney Frank
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I am not aware of any specific provision that mandates any tightening of lending to small business other than a requirement that people who lend and then sell that loan be prepared to take a part of the risk. And I'm proud of that.
Barney Frank
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Well, many of us believe that excessive media concentration is a subject that ought to be addressed, and it is, of course, the intention of the majority party not to allow that to be discussed.
Barney Frank
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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
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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
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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.
Barney Frank
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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
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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
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I have been mislabeled as a big advocate of low-income home ownership over rental.
Barney Frank
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But when others suggested that the poor should not simply be the objects of these programs but also the subjects - that they should be actively involved in shaping the programs, making decisions about how to spend the money etc. - some of the previous supporters reconsidered.
Barney Frank
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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.
Barney Frank
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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