Daniel Patrick Moynihan Jail Quotations

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 work of democratic government is routinely concerned with matters defined as troubles. In "The Presidency and the Press" I make the point, familiar to anyone who has flown about the world much, that the best quick test of the political nature of a regime is to read the local papers on arrival. If they are filled with bad news, you have landed in a libertarian society of some sort. If, on the other hand, the press is filled with good news, it is a fair bet that the jails will be filled with good men.

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