Barney Frank Quotes

In politics there are some candidates who use change to promote their careers, and then there are those like John McCain who use their careers to promote change.

There is nobody that's ever going to fill Ted Kennedy's shoes, and that's a tall order for somebody in the family to try to live up to.

Stephen Harper is probably the most dangerous human being ever elevated to power in Canada.

I don't feel like I possess a particular political intelligence, and when I read work that does, I feel like somebody else is going to have the right political thing to say. As a citizen, I feel an enormous need to respond, and immediately post-election, I felt like, What is my work worth? Should I quit what I'm doing and go work on the 2018 election now? How is what I'm putting into the world meaningful?

It is therefore not to be wondered at that Lincoln's single term in the House of Representatives at Washington added practically nothing to his reputation.

If I only had 12 years left to live, I'd want to live it as a member of Congress because that was the 12 longest years of my life.

It must kill George Bush that John McCain is the most popular and Beloved Republican in America.

In the end, Ted Kennedy was a politician, plain and simple. Yet he embodied how politics and public service can be successfully intertwined. You can't be a good public servant without being a good politician. Kennedy was both.

I think Karl Rove saw that in George W. Bush early on and understood the impact that he could have on Texas politics and probably on national politics.

Rock stars generally don't last in the Senate, starting with John Kennedy. Too much work, too slow, too little juice. Getting something accomplished takes a remarkable amount of tedious work. Rock stars who become senators either run for something else or retire on the job. They certainly don't make a mark.

If, however, the success of a politician is to be measured by the degree in which he is able personally to influence the course of politics, and attach to himself a school of political thought, then Mr. Mill, in the best meaning of the words, has succeeded.

Presidential legacies are valuable things, too valuable to be left up to historians.

Ted Kennedy will go down in history as one of the giants of the U.S. Senate and one the most accomplished legislators in American history.

I have known John McCain personally since 1982. I wrote a well-received speech for him.

I grew up in the GOP sandbox. My dad took me, age 7, to meet Herbert Hoover, in his apartment at the Waldorf Towers. He gave me a silver dollar. Being a young Republican, I spent it on comic books.

I think Newt Gingrich has a proven track record of changing Washington and getting results.

The career of politics grants a feeling of power. The knowledge of influencing men, of participating in power over them, and above all, the feeling of holding in one's hands a nerve fiber of historically important events can elevate the professional politician above everyday routine even when he is placed in formally modest positions.

I wish Stanley Baldwin no ill, but it would have been much better if he had never lived.

The unexpressed aim of every politician is to influence events that history books will record his name - and spell it right.

I can say with some confidence that President Zardari's legacy will be written in golden words. I don't say this as his son, or patron-and-chief of the Pakistan People's Party - but as a student of history.

To me, the puzzle of Ronald Reagan is how a comparatively ordinary man, someone with not extraordinary talent, accomplished such extraordinary results. At the age of 50, no one expected that this was going to be the guy who would become, at least in my interpretation, one of the two most important presidents of the 20th century.

Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton both had exceptional natural abilities. Nelson Rockefeller was very good statewide but never gained national traction.

My politics are wildly different from hers, but someone who has been good for women in politics, stamped her authority on European and world affairs, is Angela Merkel.

With his gigantic personality, my grandfather burst onto the great political panorama of that era made up only of little men with little ideas.

For even the most seasoned observers of American politics, Barack Obama is a phenomenon.