Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Daniel Patrick Moynihan (March 16, 1927 - March 26, 2003) was a four-term U.S. Senator, ambassador, administration official, and academic.

Sourced

• "[T]he 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. On the other hand, such was the power of the anticolonial idea that great powers from outside a region had relatively little influence unless they were prepared to use force. China altogether backed Fretilin in Timor , and lost. In Spanish Sahara, Russia just as completely backed Algeria, and its front, known as Polisario, and lost. In both instances the United States wished things to turn out as they did, and worked to bring this about. The Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. This task was given to me, and I carried it forward with not inconsiderable success."
  • A Dangerous Place, Little Brown, 1980, p. 247

Attributed

• "From the wild Irish slums of the 19th century eastern seaboard, to the riot-torn suburbs of Los Angeles, 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 rational expectations about the future -- that community asks for and gets chaos." (1965)

• "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." (1988)(?)

• "I don't think there's any point in being Irish if you don't know that the world is going to break your heart eventually."
  • November 22, 1963; upon recieving news that President John F. Kennedy had died.