Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Daniel Patrick "Pat" Moynihanwas an American politician and sociologist. A member of the Democratic Party, he was first elected to the United States Senate for New York in 1976, and was re-elected three times. He declined to run for re-election in 2000. Prior to his years in the Senate, Moynihan was the United States' Ambassador to the United Nations and to India, and was a member of four successive presidential administrations, beginning with the administration of John F. Kennedy, and...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth16 March 1927
CountryUnited States of America
Daniel Patrick Moynihan quotes about
The atmosphere in which social legislation is considered is not a friend of truth.
I have no doubt that there will continue to be bumps, some serious crises indeed in our relationship with China.... Neither membership in the WTO nor normalized trade relations with the United States will magically impose the rule of law on China or institute deep-seeded respect for human rights. But it certainly has potential to advance those purposes.
Secrecy is for losers.
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 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.
The United States in the 1980s may be the first society in history in which children are distinctly worse off than adults.
Secrecy is for losers. For people who do not know how important the information really is.
The status quo is working.
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.
It has proved politically wiser to set goals than to start programs.
No one is innocent after the experience of governing. But not everyone is guilty.
As the family goes, so go the children.
To strip our past of glory is no great loss, but to deny it honor is devastating.