Daniel Patrick Moynihan's Quotes

Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.

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.

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.

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.

The single most exciting thing you encounter in government is competence, because it's so rare.

The liberal left can be as rigid and destructive as any force in American life.

If you don't have 30 years to devote to social policy, don't get involved.

The great corporations of this country were not founded by ordinary people. They were founded by people with extraordinary intelligence, ambition, and aggressiveness.

Citizen participation is a device whereby public officials induce nonpublic individuals to act in a way the officials desire.