A Quote by Daniel Patrick Moynihan

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

Quote Topics

Government Acquire Agencies Been Birth Conservatives Endowed Good Government Agencies Healthy Liberals Life Namely Powers Seem Skepticism Somehow Unable

Quote Author

Daniel Patrick Moynihan
American - Politician
March 16, 1927 - March 26, 2003

Liberals believe government should take people's earnings to give to poor people. Conservatives disagree. They think government should confiscate people's earnings and give them to farmers and insolvent banks. The compelling issue to both conservatives and liberals is not whether it is legitimate for government to confiscate one's property to give to another, the debate is over the disposition of the pillage.

Walter E. Williams

We were endowed by our Creator with the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We were not endowed by the Federal Government. We were not endowed by entitlements. We were not endowed by pork barrel spending; we were not endowed by budgetary earmarks.

Lawrence Kudlow

Many, if not most, of the difficulties we experience in dealing with government agencies arise from the agencies being part of a fragmented and open political system…The central feature of the American constitutional system—the separation of powers—exacerbates many of these problems. The governments of the US were not designed to be efficient or powerful, but to be tolerable and malleable. Those who designed these arrangements always assumed that the federal government would exercise few and limited powers.

James Q. Wilson

The only difference today between Liberals and Conservatives is that the Liberals go to mass at five o'clock and the Conservatives at eight.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Conservatives define themselves more by their hatred of liberals than anything else, and, conversely, liberals by their distaste for conservatives.

Graydon Carter

The general difference between conservatives and liberals is that liberals like pretty pictures and conservatives like to build bridges that people can drive across.

Tom Clancy

Liberals want Conservatives to shut up. Conservatives want Liberals to keep talking. Because our arguments make sense and theirs don't

Bill Whittle

Conservatives believe that from the standpoint of the federal government, life begins at conception and ends at birth.

Barney Frank

Liberals and conservatives disagree over what are the most important sins. For conservatives, the sins that matter are personal irresponsibility, the flight from family life, sexual permissiveness, the failure of individuals to work hard. For liberals, the gravest sins are intolerance, a lack of generosity toward the needy, narrow-mindedness toward social and racial minorities.

E. J. Dionne

David Cameron has already said, and I have said, that a Conservative government would be giving the security agencies and law enforcement agencies the powers that they need to ensure that they are keeping up to date as people communicate with data.

Theresa May

Since Ronald Reagan's election in 1980, conservatives of various sorts, and conservatisms of various stripes, have generally been in the ascendancy. And a good thing, too! Conservatives have been right more often than not - and more often than liberals - about most of the important issues of the day.

Bill Kristol

Liberals tend to understand that a person can be lucky or unlucky in all matters relevant to his success. Conservatives, however, often make a religious fetish of individualism. Many seem to have absolutely no awareness of how fortunate one must be to succeed at anything in life, no matter how hard one works. One must be lucky to be able to work. One must be lucky to be intelligent, physically healthy, and not bankrupted in middle age by the illness of a spouse.

Sam Harris

This is the difference between conservatives and liberals. Liberals want justices to vote a certain way. We, conservatives, want a particular legal philosophy, a philosophy for how to interpret the Constitution.

Ann Coulter

The following proposition seems to me in a high degree probable—namely, that any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, the parental and filial affections being here included, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well, or nearly as well developed, as in man. For, firstly, the social instincts lead an animal to take pleasure in the society of its fellows, to feel a certain amount of sympathy with them, and to perform various services for them.

Charles Darwin

Conservatives have long been suspicious that Romney isn't truly one of them. The release of his tax returns should settle the matter once and for all: He's not only to be accepted, but admired and emulated - and by liberals as well as conservatives.