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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
Less
Government
Need
Important
Democrat
Needs
Things
Group
World
Groups
Clear

More quotes by Daniel Patrick Moynihan

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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.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
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The status quo is working.
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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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As the family goes, so go the children.
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Pandaemonium was inhabited by creatures quite convinved that the great Satan had their best interests at heart. Poor little devils.
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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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The American Constitution was designed to make it hard to have too much government.
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.
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The single most exciting thing you encounter in government is competence, because it's so rare.
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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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No one is innocent after the experience of governing. But not everyone is guilty.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
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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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The United States in the 1980s may be the first society in history in which children are distinctly worse off than adults.
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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The Lord looks after drunks and Americans.
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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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 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.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
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The atmosphere in which social legislation is considered is not a friend of truth.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan