Top 100 Al Franken Sayings
#1. If you cross Fox News Channel, it's not just me, it's Roger Ailes who will go after youThe person gets what's coming to them but never sees it coming. Look at Al Franken, one day he's going to get a knock on his door and life as he's known it will change forever. That day will happen, trust me.
Bill O'Reilly
#2. As Al Franken has demonstrated, liberals give lousy talk radio.
L. Neil Smith
#3. [Bush Hating] undermines the good faith necessary for democratic discussion. Which is a large part of what people like Al Franken are all about.
Andrew Sullivan
#4. Bob Dole used to be really funny. Barney Frank can be kind of funny. Bob Kerrey has a good sense of humor.
Al Franken
#5. I think Hell exists on Earth. It's a psychological state, or it can be a physical state. People who have severe mental illness are in Hell. People who have lost a loved one are in Hell. I think there are all kinds of different hells. It's not a place you go to after you die.
Al Franken
#6. I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and dog-gone it, people like me.
Al Franken
#7. I think that the default for collecting any kind of personal data should be opt-in consent.
Al Franken
#8. If you use Facebook - as I do - Facebook in all likelihood has a unique digital file of your face, one that can be as accurate as a fingerprint and that can be used to identify you in a photo of a large crowd.
Al Franken
#9. Whining is anger through a small opening.
Al Franken
#10. If you control the flow of information, you can control the conversation around important issues. If you can control the conversation, you can change this country.
Al Franken
#11. The right wing has had a radio apparatus for years and years, so they've had minor leagues - they've had local rightwing guys who've become national rightwing guys, and who build slowly, and that's how it goes. We haven't had that. It isn't like we have a farm team.
Al Franken
#12. Most Americans don't think about antitrust law when they look at their cable bill, flip channels on TV, or worry about what their favorite website knows about them. But they should.
Al Franken
#13. I'm sure I've devoted enough thought to Rush Limbaugh for one lifetime.
Al Franken
#14. Liberals like me love America. We just love America in a different way.
Al Franken
#15. I couldn't think of anything less appealing than molding the minds of tomorrow's leaders.
Al Franken
#16. We owe an historic debt to American Indians. They have a unique set of concerns that haven't been addressed, and I'd like to stand with them. Also, I'd like to get their views on immigration.
Al Franken
#17. I'm from the Vietnam generation. I didn't serve.
Al Franken
#18. No one is more sensitive to the issue of overeating than the creator of Stuart Smalley.
Al Franken
#19. It's easier to put on slippers than to carpet the whole world.
Al Franken
#20. During Vietnam, I was in college, enjoying my student deferment. The government wisely felt that, in my case, military service was less important than completing my studies to prepare me for my chosen career: comedian.
Al Franken
#21. Having an actual income can expand your romantic horizons toward the more appealing end of the spectrum.
Al Franken
#22. If I put myself on the ballot and even 50 people voted for me, it'd be a travesty.
Al Franken
#23. Ralph Nader is a hero. I know Ralph, and I call him up occasionally. He's helped me out on a couple of occasions when I've given speeches to corporations where he'd have a good ... He'd give me some good information.
Al Franken
#24. The Medicare Part D prescription drug bill, which might be the most corrupt piece of legislation in history, was a huge giveaway of taxpayer funds to the big pharmaceutical companies.
Al Franken
#25. Let's not let the government sell us out. Let's fight for net neutrality.
Al Franken
#26. There's an appeal to the American sense of exceptionalism, that we're morally superior, as way to not be self-critical. I think that's a bit dangerous.
Al Franken
#27. Part of the middle class promise is that, after a lifetime of hard work, you'll be able to retire and enjoy the fruits of that labor. Medicare was established to secure that promise.
Al Franken
#28. When you live in New York, one of two things happen - you either become a New Yorker, or you feel more like the place you came from.
Al Franken
#29. In my first week as a U.S. senator, I had the privilege of participating in the Supreme Court confirmation hearing for Judge Sonia Sotomayor.
Al Franken
#30. Bill Clinton is the greatest president of the 20th century because I played touch football with him.
Al Franken
#31. It's hard for a liberal to go on between Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, because it's like doing country music after hip-hop. I mean, just, the audience doesn't go from one to the other.
Al Franken
#32. When you encounter seemingly good advice that contradicts other seemingly good advice, ignore them both.
Al Franken
#33. I think the government has a role in protecting the fundamental rights of its citizens.
Al Franken
#34. If someone hacks your password, you can change it - as many times as you want.
Al Franken
#35. I'm a perfectionist and if I start making changes, I'll never stop.
Al Franken
#36. I don't consider myself an artist necessarily, but craftsmen or people in the arts, their spiritualism is sort of when you're writing well or performing well or doing whatever you do well, there's an element of that that's either God-given, a talent that you're not necessarily responsible for.
Al Franken
#37. Some of my colleagues seem more interested in using every procedural method possible to keep the Senate from doing anything than they are in creating jobs or helping Americans struggling in a difficult economy.
Al Franken
#38. I grew up in Minnesota, where we treasure our tradition of civic engagement - and our record of having the nation's highest voter participation.
Al Franken
#39. You can't change your fingerprints. You have only ten of them. And you leave them on everything you touch; they are definitely not a secret.
Al Franken
#40. Skepticism turns to cynicism, which leads to apathy and despair, which can cause sleeplessness, dry-mouth, and loss of sex drive.
Al Franken
#41. Teen pregnancy went way down in the '90s, and 75 percent of it was because of increased use of contraception.
Al Franken
#42. To ask whether the mainstream media has a conservative or liberal bias is like asking whether al-Qaida uses too much oil in their hummus. It's - I think they might use too much oil in their hummus - but it's the wrong question.
Al Franken
#43. When I first started writing for television in the seventies and eighties, the Internet didn't exist, and we didn't need to worry about foreign websites illegally distributing the latest TV shows and blockbuster movies online.
Al Franken
#44. It is my fondest wish that in the fullness of time, the American people will look back on the Franken presidency as something of a mixed bag and not as a complete disaster.
Al Franken
#45. You might not like that Facebook shares your political opinions with Politico, but are you really going to delete all the photos, all the posts, all the connections - the presence you've spent years establishing on the world's dominant social network?
Al Franken
#46. Grown-up love means actually understanding what you love, taking the good with the bad and helping your loved one grow. Love takes attention and work and is the best thing in the world.
Al Franken
#47. It's the Power of the Almighty, the Splendor of Nature, and then you.
Al Franken
#48. Apple has long been a leading innovator of mobile technology; I myself own an iPhone.
Al Franken
#49. I just can't sit still and meditate; that doesn't kind of work for me. I don't even know exactly what it means.
Al Franken
#50. I'm crushed by the responsibility of writing a satirical book.
Al Franken
#51. As someone who's spent time with our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan on USO tours and met wounded warriors at Walter Reed and Bethesda, I feel a deep obligation to the men and women who have risked life and limb on our behalf.
Al Franken
#52. He [Newt Gingrich] is the most unpopular politician in America. His favorable rating is only four points higher than the Unabomber.
Al Franken
#53. Technology is an incredible tool - it connects people to each other, creates jobs all over the world, and makes life easier for millions of Americans.
Al Franken
#54. I think Clinton fatigue was a real thing. It's just hard to get comfortable with Gore - it was hard for him to project who he is, the person people know in private.
Al Franken
#55. My dad never graduated high school. He was a printing salesman. We lived in a two-bedroom, one-bath house in St. Louis Park, Minnesota. We weren't rich - but we felt secure.
Al Franken
#56. The civil rights movement was very important in my house, and then Vietnam was very important 'cause there were two boys, so I came of age during a very heated political climate.
Al Franken
#57. The Fourth Amendment doesn't apply to corporations.
Al Franken
#58. I know I have an awful lot to learn from the people of Minnesota.
Al Franken
#59. I had a great time working on the movies, both the major movies I've done. I've had a great time. I like the people in Hollywood a lot.
Al Franken
#60. My parents didn't make a lot of money. My dad was not a high school graduate - he didn't have a career as such; he was a printing salesman essentially for most of his working life.
Al Franken
#61. If Republicans eliminate Medicare, America will become a country in which you can never retire - and once you physically can no longer work, you are desperately poor until you die.
Al Franken
#62. I'm the New York Jew who actually grew up in Minnesota.
Al Franken
#63. I hope you realize, in a democracy, laughter is assent.
Al Franken
#64. People lucky enough to live in the vicinity of an industrial hog farm are, with each breath, made keenly aware of the cause of their declining property values.
Al Franken
#65. If 98 out of 100 doctors tell me I've got a problem, I should take their advice. And if those two other doctors get paid by Big Snack Food, like certain climate deniers get paid by Big Coal, I shouldn't take their advice.
Al Franken
#66. My dad didn't graduate from high school, ended up being a printing salesman, probably never made more than $8,000 a year. My mom sold real estate and did it part time.
Al Franken
#67. Humor and seriousness are not in opposition to each other.
Al Franken
#68. If you hear, day after day, liberals are rooting against armed forces, that is eventually going to have an effect on soldiers and troops who are actually going to believe that and it's wrong. It's just wrong.
Al Franken
#69. I believe in not attacking a country pre-emptively unless you're sure of what you're doing and you're working with allies.
Al Franken
#70. National security laws must protect national security. But they must also protect the public trust and preserve the ability of an informed electorate to hold its government to account.
Al Franken
#71. Today I will masterbate!
Okay, that was a mistake. I should have written Today I will masterbate
if I want to!
Al Franken
#72. We need to be pro-science; we have to go back to science.
Al Franken
#73. Yeah, but you need an experienced radio veteran who is a liberal advocate. And there just hadn't been any radio that did that. And so they weren't trained - they had developed all these bad habits of being objective and balanced and stuff like that.
Al Franken
#74. The thing that interests me least about the radio business is the radio business. But I've had to learn a little bit about it. It's not rocket science: You get ratings, that's good.
Al Franken
#75. My views about God come from my dad. Dad told me that he believed Nature, which to him included humankind, to be so beautiful, so magnificent, that there had to be something behind it all.
Al Franken
#76. I think the Internet has developed at this incredibly rapid pace because of net neutrality, because of the free nature of it, because a YouTube can start the way YouTube started.
Al Franken
#77. I don't know what happens to you after you die. I'm not banking on there being, like, a heaven.
Al Franken
#78. I want to reclaim 'liberal.' I'm a liberal, and I think most Americans are liberals.
Al Franken
#79. The Minnesotans I talk to are really concerned about what the future holds for their families. They're trying to pay for health care and send their kids to college, they're worried about declining home values, they're scared for a loved one they have serving in Iraq.
Al Franken
#80. The reason I wrote political satire was because I thought it - politics - was important ... that public policy was important. Then I transitioned into books, then into radio.
Al Franken
#81. Yeah, we shot ourselves in the foot right out of the gate. The guy who ran it at first misled pretty much everybody about how much capital we had. He said we had enough to go three years without making money, and we had enough to go three weeks.
Al Franken
#82. When you win an election, what you really win is a chance to go to work for working families who need a voice in Minnesota.
Al Franken
#83. Antitrust law isn't about protecting competing businesses from each other, it's about protecting competition itself on behalf of the public.
Al Franken
#84. If you use a cell phone - as I do - your wireless carrier likely has records about your physical movements going back months, if not years.
Al Franken
#85. What you see on the campaign trail is me. It's easy being me.
Al Franken
#86. My dad always told me to stand up to bullies, and Bill O'Reilly is kind of a bully, and he's the kind of kid who hits other kids on the playground. And when you hit him, he runs to the teacher and says, 'Teacher, sue him.'
Al Franken
#87. Well, I think that there's a value to comedy in and of itself.
Al Franken
#88. The crash of 2008 was driven in no small part by unfair practices in the mortgage industry, which led to many consumers becoming trapped in loans they didn't understand and couldn't afford.
Al Franken
#89. Mistakes are a part of being human. Precious life lessons that can only be learned the hard way. Unless it's a fatal mistake, which, at least, others can learn from.
Al Franken
#90. The nature of the Internet and the importance of net neutrality is that innovation can come from everyone.
Al Franken
#91. One thing I've noticed about politics is that these guys have pretty thick hides.
Al Franken
#92. I've never understood why we would want to deny all the joys - and the challenges - of marriage to anyone. Which is why I think any loving, committed couple - gay or straight - should be able to get married.
Al Franken
#93. If you want a free email service that doesn't use your words to target ads to you, you'll have to figure out how to port years and years of Gmail messages somewhere else, which is about as easy as developing your own free email service.
Al Franken
#94. Why don't we focus on what Afghan women can do? They can cook, bear children and pray. As I recall, that was fine for our grandmothers.
Al Franken
#95. Changing technologies, changing marketplaces, and even changing trends in anti-competitive practices have all presented challenges to antitrust enforcement.
Al Franken
#96. We need to start by having a conversation about climate change. It would be irresponsible to avoid the issue just because it's uncomfortable to talk about.
Al Franken
#97. At 'SNL,' I wrote political stuff, but I never felt the show should have an axe to grind. But when I left in '95, I could let my own beliefs out.
Al Franken
#98. Terrorism, to me, is the use of terror for political purpose, and terror is indiscriminate murder of civilians to make a political point.
Al Franken
#99. My dad was a terrible businessman.
Al Franken
#100. I ask the American people not to fall victim to disinformation. There are no death panels. The Affordable Care Act cuts the deficit.
Al Franken
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