Patrick Moynihan
Patrick Moynihan
country ambition people
The great corporations of this country were not founded by ordinary people. They were founded by people with extraordinary intelligence, ambition, and aggressiveness.
What is not discussed, will not be advanced.
government too-much constitution
The American Constitution was designed to make it hard to have too much government.
looks lord
The Lord looks after drunks and Americans.
enemy mind mind-set
If we get into the mind-set where the good becomes the enemy of the best, we will get nothing.
government done today
In too many cases, if our Government had set out determined to destroy the family, it couldn't have done greater damage than some of what we see today.
thinking perfect hopeful
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.
government inner-peace energy
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.
heart devil littles
Pandaemonium was inhabited by creatures quite convinved that the great Satan had their best interests at heart. Poor little devils.
simple political want
Political society wants things simple. Political scientists know them to be complex... One could argue that, in part, the leftist impulse is so conspicuous among the educated and well-to-do precisely because they are exposed to more information, and are accordingly forced to choose between living with the strains of complexity, or lapsing into simplism.
facts opinion
We have the right to our own opinions, but not our own facts.
radical robber-baron i-can
I can live with the robber barons, but how do you live with these pathological radicals?
country violation-of-human-rights numbers
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.
men hands 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.