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If we get into the mind-set where the good becomes the enemy of the best, we will get nothing.

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
Best
Nothing
Mind
Good
Becomes
Enemy

More quotes by 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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Secrecy is for losers. For people who do not know how important the information really is.
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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.
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It has proved politically wiser to set goals than to start programs.
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The atmosphere in which social legislation is considered is not a friend of truth.
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At the heart of the deterioration of the fabric of the Negro society is the deterioration of the Negro family.
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The world's largest debtor is a distinction of sorts, but not the one we like having.
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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.
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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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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.
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The liberal left can be as rigid and destructive as any force in American life.
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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.
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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 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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Citizen participation is a device whereby public officials induce nonpublic individuals to act in a way the officials desire.
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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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The single most exciting thing you encounter in government is competence, because it's so rare.
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The Lord looks after drunks and Americans.
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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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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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