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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

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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
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Surely
Civilization
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Rhetoric

More quotes by Daniel Patrick Moynihan

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The liberal left can be as rigid and destructive as any force in American life.
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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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Secrecy is for losers.
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The status quo is working.
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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.
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If the newspapers of a country are filled with good news, the jails of that country will be filled with good people.
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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.
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No one is innocent after the experience of governing. But not everyone is guilty.
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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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What is not discussed, will not be advanced.
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Citizen participation is a device whereby public officials induce nonpublic individuals to act in a way the officials desire.
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There is one unmistakable lesson in American history a community that allows a large number of young men to grow up in broken families, dominated by women, never acquiring any stable relationship to male authority, never acquiring any set of rational expectations about the future - that community asks for and gets chaos.
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It has proved politically wiser to set goals than to start programs.
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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
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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.
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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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The single most exciting thing you encounter in government is competence, because it's so rare.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
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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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The atmosphere in which social legislation is considered is not a friend of truth.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
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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