The single most exciting thing you encounter in government is competence, because it's so rare. Daniel Patrick Moynihan More Quotes by Daniel Patrick Moynihan More Quotes From Daniel Patrick Moynihan You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts. Daniel Patrick Moynihan entitled opinion facts Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts. Daniel Patrick Moynihan freedom truth education 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 women growing-up relationship To be Irish is to know that in the end the world will break your heart. Daniel Patrick Moynihan break heart world 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 agency healthy government Marriage orients men and women toward the future, asking them not just to commit to each Daniel Patrick Moynihan marriage family children The American Constitution was designed to make it hard to have too much government. Daniel Patrick Moynihan constitution too-much government 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 welfare-programs taken past 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 jail country people I can live with the robber barons, but how do you live with these pathological radicals? Daniel Patrick Moynihan robbers robber-baron radical 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 government important world The principal objective of American government at every level should be to Daniel Patrick Moynihan marriage government children 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 society change culture Citizen participation is a device whereby public officials induce nonpublic individuals to act in a way the officials desire. Daniel Patrick Moynihan citizens liberty desire 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 capacity-to-love understanding men There are some mistakes only someone with a Ph.D. can make. Daniel Patrick Moynihan mistake 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 inner-peace government energy 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. Daniel Patrick Moynihan hopeful perfect thinking At the heart of the deterioration of the fabric of the Negro society is the deterioration of the Negro family. Daniel Patrick Moynihan deterioration fabric heart The liberal left can be as rigid and destructive as any force in American life. Daniel Patrick Moynihan american-life left force
