Quotes from Daniel Patrick Moynihan

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

The time may have come when the issue of race could benefit from a period of "benign neglect."

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 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.

Secrecy is for losers. For people who do not know how important the information really is.

Somehow liberals have been unable to acquire from birth what conservatives seem to be endowed with at birth namely, a healthy skepticism of the powers of government to do good.

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

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

To be Irish is to know that in the end the world will break your heart.

You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts.

The amount of violations of human rights in a country is always an inverse function of the amount of complaints about human rights violations heard from there. The greater the number of complaints being aired, the better protected are human rights in that country.

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.

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.

No one is innocent after the experience of governing. But not everyone is guilty.

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

The Soviet Union came apart along ethnic lines. The most important factor in this breakup was the disinclination of Slavic Ukraine to continue under a regime dominated by Slavic Russia. Yugoslavia came apart also, beginning with a brutal clash between Serbia and Croatia, here again 'nations' with only the smallest differences in genealogy; with, indeed, practically a common language. Ethnic conflict does not require great differences; small will do.

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

In the era of security clearances, to be an Irish Catholic became prima facie evidence of loyalty. Harvard men were to be checked; Fordham men would do the checking.

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 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.

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

If the newspapers of a country are filled with good news, the jails of that country will be filled with good people.