Daniel Patrick Moynihan

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

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

“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.”

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

“Secrecy is for losers.”

“To be a conservative, you have to have something to conserve.”

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

“No one is innocent in the tide of history. Everyone has kings and slaves in his past.”

“The United States is a nation of laws, badly written and randomly enforced.”

“The life of a republic lies certainly in the energy, virtue, and intelligence of its citizens.”

“Poverty is not a discipline. It is a calamity.”

“Am I embarrassed to speak for a less than perfect democracy? Not one bit. Find me a better one.”

“Defining deviancy down.”

“You don't have to be a majority to be right.”

“There is no great mystery to building a monument. You hire a sculptor, you make a model, and you keep going.”

“We are a nation of immigrants. We are the children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren of immigrants. We are in fact the only nation of immigrants.”

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

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

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