Al Franken Quotes

I want to write about serious things, but I want to write about them in a way that makes them accessible to a large number of people - to take them through the argument by dramatizing the circumstances in which these issues are being discussed.

When I tweet, I try and accomplish three things. One, is to make you laugh. Two, is to inform you. Three, is to enlighten you. That's all I do.

Entertainment and information work well together.

You've got to introduce people to things in a way they're going to enjoy.

One of my beliefs as a filmmaker is that if you can make somebody laugh, you can make them listen. With laughter, you can get somebody's guard down, you can open them up to listening to you. They don't feel like they're being preached to or talked down to. I think it helps, it makes really hard to understand information a little more accessible and palatable. And at the end of the day, it makes a movie a little more fun. It doesn't feel so heavy handed.

Because I was a television writer for many years, I write very conversationally. I put things straight, and with a lot of humor.

When I go into schools to speak, I am not giving a speech - it's really a one-man show. I call it 'didactic standup.'

The fun thing about Snapchat is really the surprise and the joy that comes from learning how to use it.

Anybody, providing he knows how to be amusing, has the right to talk about himself.

I write. This is what I do. My job is to sit down with my vocabulary, select words, and decide what order they should be placed in an attempt to keep someone's attention and perhaps provide them with a laugh or two along the way.

As far as what readers can expect with 'Maybe Someday,' I'm not the type of writer who writes to educate or inform my readers. I simply write to entertain them.

You have to make them laugh and then make them listen.

No matter what I have to say, I'm still trying to say it in comedic form.

Where questions of style and exposition are concerned I try to follow a simple maxim: if you can't say it clearly you don't understand it yourself.

Educators take something simple and make it complicated. Communicators take something complicated and make it simple.

If you can't read, the only thing you can do is enjoy the pictures, not the whole story. Reading is the key to knowledge. Knowledge is the key to understanding. So read on, young man! Read on, young lady!

Everything I worry about would be better if more people could read, write and comprehend.

Unless one is a genius, it is best to aim at being intelligible.

If you don't listen, you're never gonna learn.

Entertainment has to come hand in hand with a little bit of medicine.

I am a firm believer that if you can explain it to a kid, you're on the right track.

In the end, people are persuaded not by what we say, but by what they understand.

If you want to get across an idea, wrap it up in person.

For me, until I know that the audience really gets what I'm trying to communicate I'm not done.

To open the majority of peoples' minds to something new is difficult. I always think that, as long as it's funny underneath, then you can argue that a teaspoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.