Daniel Patrick Moynihan Quotes
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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.
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A responsible government does not triple the national debt in eight years.
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Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.
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The single most exciting thing you encounter in government is competence, because it's so rare.
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The Democrats have prevailed because, at heart, we have embodied a great idea, which is that an elected government can be the instrument of the common purpose of a free people; that government can embrace great causes and do great things.
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The richest inheritance any child can have is a stable, loving, disciplined family life.
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I did not have a lot of spare time after I was about eleven because in my youth, young people used to try to find ways of making money after school. From about age eleven on, I either shined shoes or did something such.
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The principal objective of American government at every level should be to see that children are born into intact families and that they remain so.
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The mudslinging has begun.
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If we get into the mind-set where the good becomes the enemy of the best, we will get nothing.
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At the heart of the deterioration of the fabric of the Negro society is the deterioration of the Negro family.
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If the newspapers of a country are filled with good news, the jails of that country will be filled with good people.
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People who pierce the veil of money rarely return with their faculties altogether intact.
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I was more in opposition within my own party, and for a long while, I was part of the opposition. I had - Scoop Jackson was my candidate in '76. I made no bones about that.
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To be Irish is to know that in the end the world will break your heart.
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Secrecy is for losers. For people who do not know how important the information really is.
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Welfare became a term of opprobrium - a contentious, often vindictive area of political conflict in which liberals and conservatives clashed and children were lost sight of.
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To strip our past of glory is no great loss, but to deny it honor is devastating.
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Irresponsibility breeds irresponsibility. The finances of government are so central. You'd think that would be pretty obvious.
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What is not discussed, will not be advanced.
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We used to play marbles for keeps. If you lost, you lost. It is the same way with politics, but not everybody knows this.
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The great corporations of this country were not founded by ordinary people. They were founded by people with extraordinary intelligence, ambition, and aggressiveness.
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In 1914, there were two countries in the world that required you to have a passport if you wanted to enter - Czarist Russia and the Ottomans. Anywhere else, you could come and go as you pleased.
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The world's largest debtor is a distinction of sorts, but not the one we like having.