Daniel Patrick Moynihan Quotes

A society that gets rid of all its troublemakers goes downhill.

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

Today, governments have more to fear from within than without

Now the Americans will realize what we in England have lived through these many years.

… a menace to our institutions

I wish for an America no less alert in guarding against dangers from within than it is watchful against enemies from without.

I think everybody must be aware that this society is a whole lot shakier now than it was before the war. I was trying to examine, in 'Dog Soldiers,' the process of that blow falling on America.

We are in danger of making our cities places where business goes on, but where life, in its real sense, is lost.

I view great cities as pestilential to the morals, the health and the liberties of man.

I sometimes wonder what use there is in trying to protect the West against fancied external threats when the signs of disintegration within are so striking

The Russian entry will prevent the Nazi domination of Europe… I do not think that there is any danger of Russian domination of Europe.

So long as danger threatened from without public opinion tolerated the guillotine.

The strength of all free peoples lies in unity; their danger, in discord

… in the decade since the end of the Cold War until September 11th, the US security establishment - the political class, the CIA, the people who fought the Cold War - had no real enemy to focus on. True, they had Saddam Hussein for a while, and they might have had a minor enemy here, another one there. But there was no real worldwide threat similar to that of the Cold War. Well, now it seems that they have one again. What this means is that the United States is going to be in this for quite some time. I have feeling that it is going to go on for ten or 15 years.

France is perilously close to its final moments.

I can quickly go to a place where I worry about society spiralling out of control.

The City of New York is like an enormous citadel, a modern Carcassonne. Walking between the magnificent skyscrapers one feels the presence on the fringe of a howling, raging mob, a mob with empty bellies, a mob unshaven and in rags.

Times are not good here. The city is crumbling into ashes. It has been buried under taxes and frauds and maladministrations so that it has become a study for archaeologists...but it is better to live here in sackcloth and ashes than to own the whole state of Ohio.

I classify Sao Paolo this way: The Governor's Palace is the living room. The mayor's office is the dining room and the city is the garden. And the favela is the back yard where they throw the garbage.

The Rusty Ruins were the remains of an old city, a hulking reminder of back when there'd been way too many people, and everyone was incredibly stupid. And ugly.

You know, the streets are filled with vipers Who've lost all ray of hope You know, it ain't even safe no more In the palace of the Pope

African-Americans now 45 percent poverty in the inner cities. The education is a disaster. Jobs are essentially nonexistent.

The African-American community, the community within the inner cities has been so badly treated.

Slumism is the pent-up anger of people living on the outside of affluence. Slumism is decay of structure and deterioration of the human spirit. Slumism is a virus which spreads through the body politic. As other "isms," it breeds disorder and demagoguery and hate.

L.A. burns, and so many other cities smolder, waiting for the hose that will flood gasoline over the coals, and we listen to politicians who fuel our hate and our narrow views and tell us it's simply a matter of getting back to basics while they sit in their beachfront properties and listen to the surf so they won't have to hear the screams of the drowning.