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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

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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
Things
Group
World
Groups
Clear
Less
Government
Need
Important
Needs
Democrat

More quotes by Daniel Patrick Moynihan

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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 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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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.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
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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.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
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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.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
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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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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
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At the heart of the deterioration of the fabric of the Negro society is the deterioration of the Negro family.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
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Pandaemonium was inhabited by creatures quite convinved that the great Satan had their best interests at heart. Poor little devils.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
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The world's largest debtor is a distinction of sorts, but not the one we like having.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
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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.
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
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The American Constitution was designed to make it hard to have too much government.
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.
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.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
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Citizen participation is a device whereby public officials induce nonpublic individuals to act in a way the officials desire.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
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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.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
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It has proved politically wiser to set goals than to start programs.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
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No one is innocent after the experience of governing. But not everyone is guilty.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
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The status quo is working.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan