Al Franken is a renowned American actor, writer and politician. He is at present the junior senator from Minnesota, known to be a comedian and political satirist. He started off his career as a writer and comedian for the ‘Saturday Night Live’ where he wrote scripts to create some of the most popular characters of the show including ‘Stuart Smalley’. He successfully worked for the show for about 15 years to become popular as a comedian. During this period, he also sharpened his skills as a political satirist as he continuously mocked politics and politicians. He also wrote a few best-selling satirical books including ‘Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right’. His political intellect helped him serve as a political commentator and host of some of the popular shows on television. This encouraged him to make a career in politics and he joined the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party to contest the elections for the position of Senator of Minnesota. His significant contributions as the senator helped him hold the position for a second term. Go through the quotes and thoughts by Al Franken which have a hilarious take on politics. We bring to you a collection of sayings and quotations by Al Franken which will inspire you besides tickling your funny bones.
WHAT DO WE WANT?! PATIENCE! WHEN DO WE WANT IT?! NOW!
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.
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.
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.
Service dogs raise their masters' sense of well-being.
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.
The government must give proper weight to both keeping America safe from terrorists and protecting Americans' privacy. But when Americans lack the most basic information about our domestic surveillance programs, they have no way of knowing whether we're getting that balance right. This lack of transparency is a big problem.
Al Franken
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
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
I'm crushed by the responsibility of writing a satirical book.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Mistakes are a part of being human. Appreciate your mistakes for what they are: precious life lessons that can only be learned the hard way. Unless it's a fatal mistake, which, at least, others can learn from
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.
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.
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.
Changing technologies, changing marketplaces, and even changing trends in anti-competitive practices have all presented challenges to antitrust enforcement.
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.
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
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
Progressives, in a way, are the new conservatives. We want to conserve what we fought to build.
Al Franken
Net neutrality isn't a government takeover of the Internet, as many of my Republican colleagues have alleged.
Al Franken
Net neutrality has been in place since the very beginning of the Internet.
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.
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.
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
Having an actual income can expand your romantic horizons toward the more appealing end of the spectrum.
Al Franken
I got interested in politics during the civil rights movement and then Vietnam.
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.'
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
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.
The way I see it, I'm not going to Washington to be the 60th Democratic senator. I'm going to Washington to be the second senator from the state of Minnesota.
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.
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.
Humor and seriousness are not in opposition to each other.
Al Franken
Minnesotans lost their jobs because the credit rating agencies didn't do the only job they're supposed to have, the only job they had, which is to give accurate, objective ratings to financial products.
Al Franken
I know I have an awful lot to learn from the people of Minnesota.
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.
I am a Minnesotan, and not just because I root for the Vikings and the Twins. I like the Minnesota-nice sensibility. I like the liberal tradition; I like the Hubert Humphrey tradition fighting for civil rights.
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.
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.
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'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.
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.'
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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
The nature of the Internet and the importance of net neutrality is that innovation can come from everyone.
Al Franken
You know, Lincoln was funny. I don't think F.D.R. was very funny. But Lincoln was funny. Lincoln was really funny. But I think you should get elected first, and then show that you're funny.
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
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.
