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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
Needs
Democrat
Things
Group
World
Groups
Clear
Less
Government
Need
Important

More quotes by Daniel Patrick Moynihan

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As the family goes, so go the children.
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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Things become complicated if there are enough people to complexify them.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
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The Lord looks after drunks and Americans.
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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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 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
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What is not discussed, will not be advanced.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
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Irresponsibility breeds irresponsibility. The finances of government are so central. You'd think that would be pretty obvious.
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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People who pierce the veil of money rarely return with their faculties altogether intact.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
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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.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
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The liberal left can be as rigid and destructive as any force in American life.
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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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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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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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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Secrecy is for losers. For people who do not know how important the information really is.
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 status quo is working.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan