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

The nature of the Internet and the importance of net neutrality is that innovation can come from everyone.
Al Franken

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Call-time has renewed my faith in the need for public financing of elections. ‘Call-time’ is where I as the candidate, sit in a room with my ‘call-time manager,’ and a phone. Then I call people and ask them for money. For hours. Apparently, I’m really good at it.
Al Franken

Minnesotans know the difference between the job of satirist and the job of senator. And so do I.
Al Franken

Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government asked me to serve as a fellow at its Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy. After my varied and celebrated career in television, movies, publishing, and the lucrative world of corporate speaking, being a fellow at Harvard seemed, frankly, like a step down.
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

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

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

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

I’ve spent my entire career being a satirist.
Al Franken

I don’t think I’m an angry person. I think I’m a person who’s angry. I’m angry at the Bush administration; I’m angry at the right wing media. And by that I don’t mean the media is right wing. I mean, there is a part of the media that’s not the mainstream media. That’s Fox, that is ‘The Wall Street Journal’ editorial page.
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

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

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

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

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

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