Top 180 Al Franken Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and dog-gone it, people like me.”

— Al Franken

2. “It’s easier to put on slippers than to carpet the whole world.”

— Al Franken

3. “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.”

— Al Franken

4. “I’m a perfectionist and if I start making changes, I’ll never stop.”

— Al Franken

5. “Anyway, here’s the thing you have to understand about Ted Cruz. I like Ted Cruz more than most of my other colleagues like Ted Cruz. And I hate Ted Cruz.”

— Al Franken

6. “Antitrust law isn’t about protecting competing businesses from each other, it’s about protecting competition itself on behalf of the public.”

— Al Franken

7. “Let’s keep the Internet weird. Let’s keep the Internet free.”

— Al Franken

8. “I like Ted Cruz more than most of my other colleagues like Ted Cruz. And I hate Ted Cruz.”

— Al Franken

9. “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

10. “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

11. “Whining is anger through a small opening.”

— Al Franken

12. “The nature of the Internet and the importance of net neutrality is that innovation can come from everyone.”

— Al Franken

13. “It’s the Power of the Almighty, the Splendor of Nature, and then you.”

— Al Franken

14. “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

15. “Let’s not let the government sell us out. Let’s fight for net neutrality.”

— Al Franken

16. “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

17. “I couldn’t think of anything less appealing than molding the minds of tomorrow’s leaders.”

— Al Franken

18. “If you look at terrorists, they really have no sense of humor.”

— Al Franken

19. “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

20. “I’m sure I’ve devoted enough thought to Rush Limbaugh for one lifetime.”

— Al Franken

21. “No whining on the yacht.”

— Al Franken

22. “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

23. “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

24. “Having children is life’s greatest joy. But there are some people, and maybe you are one of them, who don’t like kids, and consider travel life’s greatest joy. You shouldn’t have kids. Don’t have them.”

— Al Franken

25. “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

26. “I do personal attacks only on people who specialize in personal attacks.”

— Al Franken

27. “If someone hacks your password, you can change it – as many times as you want. 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

28. “I think the government has a role in protecting the fundamental rights of its citizens.”

— Al Franken

29. “Humor and seriousness are not in opposition to each other.”

— Al Franken

30. “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

31. “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

32. “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

33. “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

34. “During the Reagan Administration, Bob Dole was present at a ceremony that included each living ex-president. Looking at a tableau of Ford, Carter and Nixon, Dole said, ‘There they are: Hear No Evil, See No Evil and Evil.’”

— Al Franken

35. “When you encounter seemingly good advice that contradicts other seemingly good advice, ignore them both.”

— Al Franken

36. “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

37. “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

38. “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

39. “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

40. “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

41. “Liberals don’t hate America. We love America more than Ann Coulter does. I love it enough to engage my readers honestly.”

— Al Franken

42. “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

43. “No one is more sensitive to the issue of overeating than the creator of Stuart Smalley.”

— Al Franken

44. “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

45. “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

46. “Our laws need to reflect the evolution of technology and the changing expectations of American society. This is why the Constitution is often called a ‘living’ document.”

— Al Franken

47. “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

48. “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

49. “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

50. “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