Al Franken, Giant of the Senate Quotes

“I like Ted Cruz more than most of my other colleagues like Ted Cruz. And I hate Ted Cruz.”
― Al Franken, Al Franken, Giant of the Senate

“They tell you in this country that you have to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. And we all believe that. But first you’ve got to have the boots. And the federal government gave Franni’s family the boots.”
― Al Franken, Al Franken, Giant of the Senate

“The problem with Ted isn’t that he’s humorless. It isn’t even his truly reprehensible far-right politics. No, the problem with Ted—and the reason so many senators have a problem with Ted—is simply that he is an absolutely toxic coworker. He’s the guy in your office who snitches to corporate about your March Madness pool and microwaves fish in the office kitchen. He is the Dwight Schrute of the Senate. In”
― Al Franken, Al Franken, Giant of the Senate

“Virtually everyone in the world believes that climate change is real and is caused by human beings, except Republicans in the United States. Especially the people who would know best: 97 percent of climate scientists agree that climate change is real and caused by human activity, and I suspect the other 3 percent are being paid by the fossil fuel industry”.”
― Al Franken, Al Franken, Giant of the Senate

“But I really think that if we don’t start caring about whether people tell the truth or not, it’s going to be literally impossible to restore anything approaching a reasonable political discourse. Politicians have always shaded the truth. But if you can say something that is provably false, and no one cares, then you can’t have a real debate about anything. I”
― Al Franken, Al Franken, Giant of the Senate

“When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957, my parents, like the rest of America, were terrified. The Soviets had nuclear weapons and now were ahead of us in space. So my parents marched me and Owen into our living room, sat us down, and said, " You boys are going to study math and Science so we can beat the Soviets!"
I thought that was a lot of pressure to put on a six-year old. But own and I were obedient sons, so we studied math and science. And we were good at it.. Owen was the first in our family to go to college. He went to MIT, graduating with a degree in physics, and then became a photographer.
I went to Harvard, and became a comedian. My poor parents.
But we still beat the Soviets. You're welcome.”
― Al Franken, Al Franken, Giant of the Senate

“When Bootsie was old enough to go to high school, Fran got herself a $300 GI loan to enroll at the University of Maine. She got three more loans and graduated with a teaching degree. Because she taught Title I kids—poor kids—all her loans were forgiven. Every member of Franni’s family made it to the middle class. And they did it because of Social Security, Pell Grants, the GI Bill, and Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. They tell you in this country that you have to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. And we all believe that. But first you’ve got to have the boots. And the federal government gave Franni’s family the boots.”
― Al Franken, Al Franken, Giant of the Senate

“It was almost as if the incoming commander-in-chief had some sort of mental health problem. The kind of mental health problem that you would be disturbed to discover in your kid’s piano teacher, let alone the president of the United States of America”
― Al Franken, Al Franken, Giant of the Senate

“But now we seem to have entered an era where getting caught lying openly and shamelessly, lying in a manner that insults the intelligence of both your friends and foes, lying about lying, and lying for the sake of lying have all lost their power to damage a politician. In fact, the “Trump Effect” yields the opposite result: Trump supporters seem to approve of the fact that he lies constantly, including to them.”
― Al Franken, Al Franken, Giant of the Senate

“I don’t know why dishonesty has always gotten under my skin. My parents taught me to tell the truth, but come on, whose parents didn’t? Well, okay, maybe Trump’s. The point is, I don’t know where exactly my particular obsession with lies and lying liars came from. And I admit, it’s a little weird. Part of it may be that I’ve always been an incredibly literal person.”
― Al Franken, Al Franken, Giant of the Senate

“I know I’m sort of farting into the wind on this. But I hope you’ll fart along with me. I’ve always believed that it’s possible to discern true statements from false statements, and that it’s critically important to do so, and that we put our entire democratic experiment in peril when we don’t. It’s a lesson I fear our nation is about to learn the hard way. That’s”
― Al Franken, Al Franken, Giant of the Senate

“My point is, the Senate is filled not just with lawyers, but with old white men.”
― Al Franken, Al Franken, Giant of the Senate

“In the foreseeable future, I will be a dead person. I want to remind you that dead people are people too. There are good dead people and bad dead people. Some of my best friends are dead people. Dead people have fought in every war.” Then”
― Al Franken, Al Franken, Giant of the Senate

“The Democratic Senator’s Serenity Prayer God Grant Me the Serenity to Accept the Things I Cannot Legislate The Courage to Legislate the Things I Can The Wisdom to Know the Difference And the Patience to Explain That Difference to My Donors”
― Al Franken, Al Franken, Giant of the Senate

“I watched Harry closely as he read the joke and then… burst out laughing. In fact, he started shaking with laughter. It was a surreal moment, sitting nervously with my consultants, watching Harry Reid convulse in hysterics over the idea of Anne Frank playing drums in the attic. Finally, he turned to me. I just shrugged.”
― Al Franken, Al Franken, Giant of the Senate

“Today’s Congress is a polarized, dysfunctional body, rendered helpless by partisanship, more focused on scoring short-term political points than on solving our nation’s urgent problems. In short, the Washington of the past decade has been awash in nincompoopery.USS* And that was before Trump.”
― Al Franken, Al Franken, Giant of the Senate

“If we don't start caring about whether people tell the truth or not, it's going to be literally impossible to restore anything approaching reasonable political discourse.”
― Al Franken, Al Franken, Giant of the Senate

“Virtually everyone in the world believes that climate change is real and is caused by human beings, except Republicans in the United States.”
― Al Franken, Al Franken, Giant of the Senate

“I know this seems quaint, but back in 2008, Republicans did not consider "demeaning and degrading women" to be senatorial, let alone presidential.”
― Al Franken, Al Franken, Giant of the Senate

“No whining on the yacht.”
― Al Franken, Al Franken, Giant of the Senate

“Former Massachusetts congressman Barney Frank once said, “I only voted once for someone who believes in 100 percent of what I believe. And that’s when I voted for myself—the first time.”
― Al Franken, Al Franken, Giant of the Senate

“As the polls began closing in the East, with states like New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Virginia going for Barack Obama, it was quickly becoming clear that this would be an especially bad night for racists all across the country.”
― Al Franken, Al Franken, Giant of the Senate

“Campaign contributions don’t buy votes. What they buy is access.”
― Al Franken, Al Franken, Giant of the Senate

“That’s how things are supposed to work. If you are privileged enough to have a job as a lawmaker, part of your job is to make laws. And if you don’t like the way a law is working, your job is to help make it work better. But”
― Al Franken, Al Franken, Giant of the Senate

“I’m not going to write stuff like, “Mitch McConnell and I may disagree, but when we’re off the clock, we’re the best of friends—sometimes we go to dinner and Mitch will laugh so hard that milk shoots out of his nose.” No, I’m not going to be writing clichés like that. Instead,”
― Al Franken, Al Franken, Giant of the Senate

“I compensated for this by absorbing as much”
― Al Franken, Al Franken, Giant of the Senate

“Unions gave us the forty-hour workweek, the weekend, and the middle class.”
― Al Franken, Al Franken, Giant of the Senate

“I really think that if we don’t start caring about whether people tell the truth or not, it’s going to be literally impossible to restore anything approaching a reasonable political discourse. Politicians have always shaded the truth. But if you can say something that is provably false, and no one cares, then you can’t have a real debate about anything. I firmly believe that you can draw a straight line from Rush Limbaugh through Fox News through present-day websites like Breitbart and the explosion in “fake news”* that played such a big role in the 2016 campaign. And that’s how someone like Trump can wind up in the Oval Office. I know I’m sort of farting into the wind on this. But I hope you’ll fart along with me. I’ve always believed that it’s possible to discern true statements from false statements, and that it’s critically important to do so, and that we put our entire democratic experiment in peril when we don’t. It’s a lesson I fear our nation is about to learn the hard way.”
― Al Franken, Al Franken, Giant of the Senate

“I think Gore would have been a great president, may well have prevented 9/ 11, and would not have sent us to war in Iraq based on manufactured evidence. And he’d have addressed climate change, which to me is the greatest existential threat facing mankind.”
― Al Franken, Al Franken, Giant of the Senate

“I also discovered how much I could learn from listening to other people’s stories—even people who at first blush didn’t seem like the kind of people you could learn much of anything from”
― Al Franken, Al Franken, Giant of the Senate