For four decades, Barney Frank has been a font of witty, oftentimes acerbic, comments about life as a politician, on both Beacon and Capitol hills. An assortment of his quotes:
“Wouldn’t it be cheaper to raise the city than to depress the Artery?”
-- To Massachusetts Transportation Secretary Frederick Salvucci on the Big Dig project in the 1970s.
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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.”
-- Ford Hall Forum talk, 1981.
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“I don’t begrudge Ronald Reagan an occasional nap. We must understand it’s not the dozing off of Ronald Reagan that causes us problems. Its what he does on those moments when he’s awake.”
— Commenting on criticism that President Reagan fell asleep in some Cabinet meetings, 1984
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“I can’t believe what a bleeder Newt is.”
-- describing in 1995 how easily the new speaker is affected by criticism.
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“Coming out has helped me enormously, because politics is such a personal business. I look back to when I was in the Massachusetts Legislature, and I was too hard-edged and nasty. I think the lack of a healthy emotional life showed.’’
--- 1995
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“I rule out that it was an innocent mispronunciation... I turned to my own expert, my mother, who reports that in 59 years of marriage, no one ever introduced her as Elsie Fag.”
-- referring to GOP leader Dick Armey calling Frank “Barney Fag’’ in 1995
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“Mr. Starr, you’re the expert on unfair questions. If you tell me it’s an unfair question, I’ll withdraw it.”
-- Responding to a protest by Kenneth Starr, independent counsel investigating the Clinton-Lewinsky affair, while being grilled by Frank during a House Judiciary Committee hearing in 1998.
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“People might cite George Bush as proof that you can be totally impervious to the effects of Harvard and Yale education.”
-- 2005
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“I’d ignore people. I look forward to that.”
-- on what he’d do in retirement, in 2008