Top 79 Quotes & Sayings by Daniel Patrick Moynihan - Page 2

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.

...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.

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.

Liberty lives in protest and democracy prospers under conditions of change. When we travel about the world and come to a country whose newspapers are filled with bad news we feel that liberty lives in that land. When we come to a country whose newspapers are filled with good news, we feel differently.

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.

The atmosphere in which social legislation is considered is not a friend of truth.

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.

The issue of race could benefit from a period of benign neglect.

Secrecy is for losers.

It has proved politically wiser to set goals than to start programs.

The status quo is working.

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.

What the press never does say is who the leaker is and why he wants the story leaked. Yet, more often than not, this is the more important story: What policy wins if the one being disclosed loses?

If we get into the mind-set where the good becomes the enemy of the best, we will get nothing.

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 United States in the 1980s may be the first society in history in which children are distinctly worse off than adults.

The world's largest debtor is a distinction of sorts, but not the one we like having.

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.

Irresponsibility breeds irresponsibility. The finances of government are so central. You'd think that would be pretty obvious.