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
When a person goes to a country and finds their newspapers filled with nothing but good news, he can bet there are good men in jail.
The work of democratic government is routinely concerned with matters defined as troubles. In "The Presidency and the Press" I make the point, familiar to anyone who has flown about the world much, that the best quick test of the political nature of a regime is to read the local papers on arrival. If they are filled with bad news, you have landed in a libertarian society of some sort. If, on the other hand, the press is filled with good news, it is a fair bet that the jails will be filled with good men.
If the newspapers of a country are filled with good news, the jails of that country will be filled with good people.
A responsible government does not triple the national debt in eight years.
The world's largest debtor is a distinction of sorts, but not the one we like having...
People who pierce the veil of money rarely return with their faculties altogether intact.
Irresponsibility breeds irresponsibility. The finances of government are so central. You'd think that would be pretty obvious.
No one is innocent after the experience of governing. But not everyone is guilty.
As the family goes, so go the children.
...there is simply nothing so important to a people and its government as how many of them there are, whether their number is growing or declining, how they are distributed as between different ages, sexes, and different social classes and racial and ethnic groups, and again, which way these numbers are moving.
Citizen participation is a device whereby public officials induce nonpublic individuals to act in a way the officials desire.
If you don't have 30 years to devote to social policy, don't get involved.
At 14 you are still in most respects a dependent youth, in some respects a child. At 24 you are an adult. In between, extraordinary turbulences take place.
The US wished things to turn out as they did, and worked to bring this about. The department of state desired that the UN prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. This task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success.