Barney Frank (March 31, 1940)

Barney Frank has been in the US House of Representatives since 1981. He says “I'm used to being in the minority. I'm a left-handed gay Jew. I've never felt, automatically, a member of any majority.”

He also says lots of other things that are both right and clever. A few from his website:

• “Gay people have a different role than other minority groups…Very few black kids have ever had to worry about telling their parents that they were black.”
• “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.”
• “Ronald Reagan believes in the free market like some people believe in unicorns.”
• “In the business I am in, sometimes you get credit for the sun shining and sometimes you get blamed when it rains.”
• "If this is a Christian nation, how come some poor Jew has to get up at 5:30 in the morning to preside over the House of Representatives?"
• “There are rules of excessive civility around here to which I generally subscribe. You do need a certain amount of courtliness in the system. But that, in itself, can become a form of abuse. There are limits to when you restrain yourself from calling a fool a fool.”