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The Us Wished Things To Turn Out As They Did, And Worked To Bring This About. The Department Of State Desired That The Un Prove Utterly Ineffective In Whatever Measures It Undertook. This Task Was Given To Me, And I Carried It Forward With No Inconsiderable Success.

-Daniel Patrick Moynihan

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The Us Wished Things

Daniel Patrick Moynihan

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The Us Wished Things To Turn Out As They Did, And Worked To Bring This About. The Department Of State Desired That The Un Prove Utterly Ineffective In Whatever Measures It Undertook. This Task Was Given To Me, And I Carried It Forward With No Inconsiderable Success.

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Government Cannot Provide Values To Persons Who Have None, Or Who Have Lost Those They Had. It Cannot Provide Inner Peace. It Can Provide Outlets For Moral Energies, But It Cannot Create Those Energies.

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.

If You Don't Have 30 Years To Devote To Social Policy, Don't Get Involved.

The American Constitution Was Designed To Make It Hard To Have Too Much Government.

People Who Pierce The Veil Of Money Rarely Return With Their Faculties Altogether Intact.

One Ideological Claim Is That Private Property Is Theft, That The Natural Product Of The Existence Of Property Is Evil, And That Private Ownership Therefore Should Not Exist... What Those Who Feel This Way Don't Realize Is That Property Is A Notion That Has To Do With Control - That Property Is A System For The Disposal Of Power. The Absence Of Property Almost Always Means The Concentration Of Power In The State.

At The Heart Of The Deterioration Of The Fabric Of The Negro Society Is The Deterioration Of The Negro Family.

A Commonplace Of Political Rhetoric Has It That The Quality Of A Civilization May Be Measured By How It Cares For Its Elderly. Just As Surely, The Future Of A Society May Be Forecast By How It Cares For Its Young.

It Has Proved Politically Wiser To Set Goals Than To Start Programs.

We've Come Full Circle But The Best Remains The Heart Of The City, The Greatest Center Of The Greatest City, Our Acropolis, Where Our Christmas Tree Is Lighted.

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.

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 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.

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As The Family Goes, So Go The Children.

Marriage Orients Men And Women Toward The Future, Asking Them Not Just To Commit To Each Other But To Plan, To Earn, To Save, And To Devote Themselves To Advancing Their Children's Prospects.

Things Become Complicated If There Are Enough People To Complexify Them.

The Liberal Left Can Be As Rigid And Destructive As Any Force In American Life.

Secrecy Is For Losers. For People Who Do Not Know How Important The Information Really Is.

There Are Some Mistakes Only Someone With A Ph.d. Can Make.

Citizen Participation Is A Device Whereby Public Officials Induce Nonpublic Individuals To Act In A Way The Officials Desire.

Irresponsibility Breeds Irresponsibility. The Finances Of Government Are So Central. You'd Think That Would Be Pretty Obvious.

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.

I'm A Democrat, And There Are An Important Group Of Things Only The Government Can Do. But Let Us Be Clear That For Most Of The World, What They Most Need Is Less Government.

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To Strip Our Past Of Glory Is No Great Loss, But To Deny It Honor Is Devastating.

So Many Of The New Nations Which Were Established As Democracies After The Second World War, During The Decolonizing Process, Have Now Changed Their System To State-socialism. Small Elites Run Them, And They Aren't Sharing Societies. They Aren't Even Socialist. The Power Of The State Has Been Merged With Business Property And You Have The Greatest Concentration Of Power That's Possible.

The World's Largest Debtor Is A Distinction Of Sorts, But Not The One We Like Having.

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The Institution Of The Family Is Decisive In Determining Not Only If A Person Has The Capacity To Love Another Individual But In The Larger Social Sense Whether He Is Capable Of Loving His Fellow Men Collectively. The Whole Of Society Rests On This Foundation For Stability, Understanding And Social Peace.

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I Can Live With The Robber Barons, But How Do You Live With These Pathological Radicals?

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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.

There Is One Unmistakable Lesson In American History; A Community That Allows A Large Number Of Young Men To Grow Up In Broken Families, Dominated By Women, Never Acquiring Any Stable Relationship To Male Authority, Never Acquiring Any Set Of Rational Expectations About The Future - That Community Asks For And Gets Chaos.

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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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You Are Entitled To Your Opinion. But You Are Not Entitled To Your Own Facts.

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The Us Wished Things To Turn Out As They Did, And Worked To Bring This About. The Department Of State Desired That The Un Prove Utterly Ineffective In Whatever Measures It Undertook. This Task Was Given To Me, And I Carried It Forward With No Inconsiderable Success.

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