Al Franken Quotes & Sayings

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

To make the argument that the media has a left- or right-wing, or a liberal or a conservative bias, is like asking if the problem with Al-Qaeda is do they use too much oil in their hummus. — Al Franken

I got interested in politics during the civil rights movement and then Vietnam. — Al Franken

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

I'm a perfectionist and if I start making changes, I'll never stop. — Al Franken

Demagoguery sells. And therefore radio stations will put it on. But that doesn't mean that you can't do something else and also make it sell. You know, when I look at an Ann Coulter or I look at a Rush or I look at a Sean Hannity, I think to myself, 'What kind of self-image do you have?' — Al Franken

Being a comedian, you're under pressure. You have to deal with stress and pressure to perform - to deal with pressure without stress. — Al Franken

Humor and seriousness are not in opposition to each other. — Al Franken

In our political system, money is power. And that means a few can have a lot more power than the rest. That's bad news for everyone else - and for our democracy itself. — Al Franken

Let's keep the Internet weird. Let's keep the Internet free. — Al Franken

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

Too many people don't protect their smartphones with a password or PIN. I anticipate that Apple's fingerprint reader will in fact make iPhone 5S owners more likely to secure their smartphones. — Al Franken

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

It's hard to have that debate around secret programs authorized by secret legal opinions issued by a secret court. Actually, it's impossible to have that debate. — Al Franken

The institutions that we've built up over the years to protect our individual privacy rights from the government don't apply to the private sector. The Fourth Amendment doesn't apply to corporations. The Freedom of Information Act doesn't apply to Silicon Valley. And you can't impeach Google if it breaks its 'Don't be evil' campaign pledge. — Al Franken

When people talked about protecting their privacy when I was growing up, they were talking about protecting it from the government. They talked about unreasonable searches and seizures, about keeping the government out of their bedrooms. — Al Franken

Gary Bauer is a very good - he's a good friend of mine. — Al Franken

Asking the question whether the mainstream media has a liberal or conservative bias is like asking whether al Qaeda uses too much oil in their hummus. I might think they use a little bit too much oil; some people might think it's a little dry. But the problem with al Qaeda is they want to kill us. And the problem with the mainstream media is that it has these other biases that are much more important. — Al Franken

Google's screen for privacy settings does give you more options for what you share than Apple's does. But it's not a complete list, and people aren't aware of whether or not that information will go to a third party. — Al Franken

If I put myself on the ballot and even 50 people voted for me, it'd be a travesty. — Al Franken

My dad loved comedians, especially George Jessel, and he loved Henny Youngman and Buddy Hackett. — Al Franken

Minnesota has a proud tradition of having two Senators on the Ag committee - a tradition I'd like very much to continue. — Al Franken

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

I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and dog-gone it, people like me. — Al Franken

I listen to NPR when I listen to the radio, but I don't listen to the radio that much. You know, I listen to Garrison Keillor, I listen to 'Prairie Home Companion.' — Al Franken

Bill Clinton is the greatest president of the 20th century because I played touch football with him. — Al Franken

Liberals like me love America. We just love America in a different way. — Al Franken

Whining is anger through a small opening. — Al Franken

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

We love America just as much as they do. But in a different way. You see, they love America like a 4-year-old loves his mommy. Liberals love America like grown-ups. To a 4-year-old, everything Mommy does is wonderful and anyone who criticizes Mommy is bad. Grown-up love means actually understanding what you love, taking the good with the bad and helping your loved one grow. — Al Franken

Google might be doping the horses. — Al Franken

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

Changing technologies, changing marketplaces, and even changing trends in anti-competitive practices have all presented challenges to antitrust enforcement. — Al Franken

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

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

I'm the New York Jew who actually grew up in Minnesota. — Al Franken

Today I will masterbate!
Okay, that was a mistake. I should have written Today I will masterbate
if I want to! — Al Franken

The Fourth Amendment doesn't apply to corporations. — Al Franken

The Republican agenda is a radical vision in which Medicaid is slashed to the bone - in which we start to balance the budget on the backs of, literally, our most vulnerable citizens. — Al Franken

And I think that being able to make people laugh and write a book that's funny makes the information go down a lot easier and it makes it a lot more fun to read, easier to understand, and often stronger. So there's all kinds of advantages to it. — Al Franken

There is a subset of Democrats who tend to mis-fill out ballots. The way you mark the ballot is like an S.A.T. - you fill in the circle. And the subset of people who tend to, like, put a check there instead, or an X, or fill it out wrong, tend to be people who didn't take S.A.T.s, or first-time voters, or people with English as a second language. — Al Franken

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

We need to prepare our kids for a 21st Century economy, and we're not doing it with our schools. — Al Franken

It's not preppies, cause I'm a preppie myself. I just don't like homosexuals. If you ask me, they're all homosexuals in the Pudding. Hey, I was glad when that Pudding homosexual got killed in Philadelphia. — Al Franken

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

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

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

The next thing I am doing is moving back home to Minnesota and getting involved in politics. I'm looking at a run for Senate in 2008, but in the meantime I am focused on knitting together the progressive network in the upper Midwest. — Al Franken

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

Apple has long been a leading innovator of mobile technology; I myself own an iPhone. — Al Franken

Veterans report that service dogs help break their isolation. People will often avert their eyes when they see a wounded veteran. But when the veteran has a dog, the same people will come up and say, 'Hi' to pet the dog and then strike up a conversation. — Al Franken

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

If you look at terrorists, they really have no sense of humor. — Al Franken

If we have George W. Bush as president, we're going to go back to the kind of policies we had when his father and Ronald Reagan were president. — Al Franken

I also focus on Bush and his administration - who do a lot of lying - and how a right-wing media has allowed them to get away with a lot of stuff that, in a different media environment, they probably wouldn't be able to get away with. — Al Franken

I'm part of the mushball middle. I consider 'confused' the majority position because, thankfully, most people would rather be uncertain some of the time than 100% positive all the time - even when they're wrong. — Al Franken

The biases the media has are much bigger than conservative or liberal. They're about getting ratings, about making money, about doing stories that are easy to cover. — Al Franken

Let's not let the government sell us out. Let's fight for net neutrality. — Al Franken

My parents were really political. The news was very important in our home. We basically had dinner every night while watching the news, and then we'd discuss it with our parents. — Al Franken

I do have a self-censor; everybody does, or at least most who are not pathological do. — Al Franken

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

You have to love your country like an adult loves somebody, not like a child loves its mommy. And right-wing Republicans tend to love America like a child loves its mommy, where everything Mommy does is okay. But adult love means you're not in denial, and you want the loved one to be the best they can be. — Al Franken

When the Constitution was written, the founders had no way of anticipating the new technologies that would evolve in the coming centuries. — Al Franken

There is - I mean - I found early in life that righteous indignation is a little off-putting, and so I try to couch it with humor. — Al Franken

He [Newt Gingrich] is the most unpopular politician in America. His favorable rating is only four points higher than the Unabomber. — Al Franken

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

The point is that there is tremendous hypocrisy among the Christian right. And I think that Christian voters should start looking at global warming and extreme poverty as a religious issue that speaks to the culture of life. — Al Franken

Well, a lot of politics is communicating with people, and obviously comedy has something to do with that. I've been a producer and led people. Also, being a comedian, you're under pressure. — Al Franken

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

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

We need to be pro-science; we have to go back to science. — Al Franken

I think if you're going to do a movie about Reagan, you do it about the fact that he created the huge deficit, that he armed the Mujahideen, that he armed Saddam, that he armed Iran, that he armed two-thirds of the Axis of Evil, and that he funded terrorists in Central America. He was, in my mind, a terrible president. — Al Franken

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

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

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

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

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

Bob Dole used to be really funny. Barney Frank can be kind of funny. Bob Kerrey has a good sense of humor. — Al Franken

Sometimes if I tell people, 'I'm afraid that I'm really a fraud,' or 'I have a lot of self-doubt,' they go, 'Oh, no, you're kidding.' I go, 'No, I'm really honest.' — Al Franken

I'm crushed by the responsibility of writing a satirical book. — Al Franken

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

I believe people have a right to know what's going on with their information and how it's collected, how it's stored and who gets it. — Al Franken

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

I don't know what happens to you after you die. I'm not banking on there being, like, a heaven. — Al Franken

Does the mainstream media have a liberal bias? On a couple of things, maybe. Compared to the American public at large, probably a slightly higher percentage of journalists, because of thier enhanced power of discernment, realize they know a gay person or two, and are, therefore, less frightened of them. — Al Franken

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

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

I'm a bit of a shill for the Clinton Administration, which has its perks. I'm invited to all the inaugural balls. — Al Franken

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

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

Skepticism turns to cynicism, which leads to apathy and despair, which can cause sleeplessness, dry-mouth, and loss of sex drive. — Al Franken

For 35 years, I was a writer. I wrote a lot of jokes. Some of them weren't funny. Some of them weren't appropriate. Some of them were downright offensive. I understand that. — Al Franken

Comedy to the Senate? Well, there certainly hasn't been a satirist or a political satirist who's done that. So, that really was uncharted territory during the campaign. But I think it's a good thing. Some people thought that it was an odd career arc, but to me it made absolute sense. — Al Franken

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

As a source of innovation, an engine of our economy, and a forum for our political discourse, the Internet can only work if it's a truly level playing field. Small businesses should have the same ability to reach customers as powerful corporations. A blogger should have the same ability to find an audience as a media conglomerate. — Al Franken

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

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

I don't know how many of you have been to New York, but if a building is two blocks away from anything, you can't see it. — Al Franken

Net neutrality isn't a government takeover of the Internet, as many of my Republican colleagues have alleged. — Al Franken

What you see on the campaign trail is me. It's easy being me. — Al Franken