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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
Single
Liberty
Competence
Politics
Libertarianism
Political
Encounter
Government
Encounters
Thing
Libertarian
Rare
Exciting
More quotes by Daniel Patrick Moynihan
People who pierce the veil of money rarely return with their faculties altogether intact.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
No one is innocent after the experience of governing. But not everyone is guilty.
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
Citizen participation is a device whereby public officials induce nonpublic individuals to act in a way the officials desire.
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
The status quo is working.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
The American Constitution was designed to make it hard to have too much government.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Secrecy is for losers. For people who do not know how important the information really is.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
The principal objective of American government at every level should be to see that children are born into intact families and that they remain so.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Secrecy is for losers. . . . It is time to dismantle government secrecy, this most persuasive of Cold War-era regulations. It is time to begin building the supports for the era of openness that is already upon us.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
A commonplace of political rhetoric has it that the quality of a civilization may be measured by how it cares for its elderly. Just as surely, the future of a society may be forecast by how it cares for its young.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
It has proved politically wiser to set goals than to start programs.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
The atmosphere in which social legislation is considered is not a friend of truth.
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
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
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.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Irresponsibility breeds irresponsibility. The finances of government are so central. You'd think that would be pretty obvious.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
The institution of the family is decisive in determining not only if a person has the capacity to love another individual but in the larger social sense whether he is capable of loving his fellow men collectively. The whole of society rests on this foundation for stability, understanding and social peace.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
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
As the family goes, so go the children.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
