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The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan

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Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Age: 76 †
Born: 1927
Born: March 16
Died: 2003
Died: March 26
Diplomat
Former United States Senator
Military Personnel
Politician
Sociologist
Teacher
Writer
Tulsa
Oklahoma
Daniel Patrick Pat Moynihan
Daniel Patrick
Culture
Liberal
Truth
Central
Change
Determine
Conservative
Save
Politics
Society
Success
Determines

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The great corporations of this country were not founded by ordinary people. They were founded by people with extraordinary intelligence, ambition, and aggressiveness.
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The liberal left can be as rigid and destructive as any force in American life.
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Somehow liberals have been unable to acquire from life what conservatives seem to be endowed with at birth: namely, a healthy skepticism of the powers of government agencies to do good.
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If we get into the mind-set where the good becomes the enemy of the best, we will get nothing.
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Secrecy is for losers. For people who do not know how important the information really is.
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You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts.
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Pandaemonium was inhabited by creatures quite convinved that the great Satan had their best interests at heart. Poor little devils.
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The United States in the 1980s may be the first society in history in which children are distinctly worse off than adults.
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What is not discussed, will not be advanced.
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The nature of the new world system was not so different from the old. It was for the moment more stable, but a reasonable forecast would be that Africa in particular had a century of border wars ahead of it.
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The amount of violations of human rights in a country is always an inverse function of the amount of complaints about human rights violations heard from there. The greater the number of complaints being aired, the better protected are human rights in that country.
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It has proved politically wiser to set goals than to start programs.
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Things become complicated if there are enough people to complexify them.
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The atmosphere in which social legislation is considered is not a friend of truth.
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The Lord looks after drunks and Americans.
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No one is innocent after the experience of governing. But not everyone is guilty.
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The steady expansion of welfare programs can be taken as a measure of the steady disintegration of the Negro family structure over the past generation in the United States.
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In too many cases, if our Government had set out determined to destroy the family, it couldn't have done greater damage than some of what we see today.
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We've come full circle but the best remains the heart of the city, the greatest center of the greatest city, our Acropolis, where our Christmas tree is lighted.
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The American Constitution was designed to make it hard to have too much government.
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