Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Daniel Patrick "Pat" Moynihanwas an American politician and sociologist. A member of the Democratic Party, he was first elected to the United States Senate for New York in 1976, and was re-elected three times. He declined to run for re-election in 2000. Prior to his years in the Senate, Moynihan was the United States' Ambassador to the United Nations and to India, and was a member of four successive presidential administrations, beginning with the administration of John F. Kennedy, and...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth16 March 1927
CountryUnited States of America
The atmosphere in which social legislation is considered is not a friend of truth.
Stubborn opposition to proposals often has no other basis than the complaining question, 'Why wasn't I consulted?'
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.
The great corporations of this country were not founded by ordinary people. They were founded by people with extraordinary intelligence, ambition, and aggressiveness.
What is not discussed, will not be advanced.
The American Constitution was designed to make it hard to have too much government.
The Lord looks after drunks and Americans.
If we get into the mind-set where the good becomes the enemy of the best, we will get nothing.
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.
Am I embarrassed to speak for a less than perfect democracy? Not one bit. Find me a better one. Do I suppose there are societies which are free of sin? No, I don't. Do I think ours is, on balance, incomparably the most hopeful set of human relations the world has? Yes, I do.
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.
Pandaemonium was inhabited by creatures quite convinved that the great Satan had their best interests at heart. Poor little devils.
Political society wants things simple. Political scientists know them to be complex... One could argue that, in part, the leftist impulse is so conspicuous among the educated and well-to-do precisely because they are exposed to more information, and are accordingly forced to choose between living with the strains of complexity, or lapsing into simplism.
We have the right to our own opinions, but not our own facts.