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The single most exciting thing you encounter in government is competence, because it's so rare.
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
Rare
Exciting
Single
Competence
Liberty
Libertarianism
Politics
Encounter
Political
Encounters
Government
Thing
Libertarian
More quotes by Daniel Patrick Moynihan
The American Constitution was designed to make it hard to have too much government.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
The world's largest debtor is a distinction of sorts, but not the one we like having.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Things become complicated if there are enough people to complexify them.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
If we get into the mind-set where the good becomes the enemy of the best, we will get nothing.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Irresponsibility breeds irresponsibility. The finances of government are so central. You'd think that would be pretty obvious.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
It has proved politically wiser to set goals than to start programs.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
No one is innocent after the experience of governing. But not everyone is guilty.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
It is perhaps common in the world for individuals and nations to suffer for their noble qualities more than for their ignoble ones. For nobility is an occasion for pride, the most treacherous of sentiments.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Government cannot provide values to persons who have none, or who have lost those they had. It cannot provide inner peace. It can provide outlets for moral energies, but it cannot create those energies.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
I'm a Democrat, and there are an important group of things only the government can do. But let us be clear that for most of the world, what they most need is less government.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
The great corporations of this country were not founded by ordinary people. They were founded by people with extraordinary intelligence, ambition, and aggressiveness.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
The liberal left can be as rigid and destructive as any force in American life.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
The Lord looks after drunks and Americans.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
When a person goes to a country and finds their newspapers filled with nothing but good news, he can bet there are good men in jail.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
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.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
If the newspapers of a country are filled with good news, the jails of that country will be filled with good people.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
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.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
The atmosphere in which social legislation is considered is not a friend of truth.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
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.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
People who pierce the veil of money rarely return with their faculties altogether intact.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
