Daniel Patrick Moynihan Quotes

If you have short term political problems, you behave in a short term way.

The essential ingredient of politics is timing.

One of the things that I think you see sometimes in politics is a certain degree of caution. It's usually advised by consultants who don't want to see you march to the end of a limb.

No man can be a politician, except he be first a historian or a traveller; for except he can see what must be, or what may be, he is no politician.

Forget the consultants, the pundits and the pollsters; good policy is good politics.

Good policy makes good politics and what I've done has been good politics.

In order to have your short term policies accepted, you have to have your long term policies understood.

When you are President you have to get something done, and that often means compromise.

Running a country is much more difficult than running a campaign.

One of the reasons we don't have a serious foreign policy is that we pay too much attention to public opinion.

It is not very often given to a politician to turn out to be right.

A great politician has to bother himself less with means than with goals.

A policy needs a clear goal.

It is axiomatic in politics that the earlier one addresses a problem, the more the alternatives and the easier the solutions.

Nothing is harder in politics than to do something now that costs money and will not benefit us until several years from now.

All policy is targeted in one way or another.

There is something wrong with the way in which we make our decisions. The Government listen too much to the pollsters and the party managers. The trouble is that they are not even very good at politics, and they are entering too much into policy decisions. As a result, there is too much short-termism, too much reacting to events, and not enough shaping of events. We give the impression of being in office but not in power. Far too many important decisions are made for 36 hours' publicity.

Two types of choices seem to me to have been crucial in tipping their outcomes towards success or failure: long-term planning, and willingness to reconsider core values.

There are two ways to fail. The first is to not make your plan. The second is to make your plan and your plan is not big enough. Most people fail in the second way. They make their plans by month, by quarter and by year.

[There is] a type of which he [Theodore Roosevelt] is perhaps the master specimen—the politician who could not help being one if he tried…. when Mr. Roosevelt takes a step which the mass of his fellow citizens regard as carefully considered for its political effect, the chances are at least even that he is merely obeying a natural impulse, which may make for either strength or weakness.

Not failure, but low aim, is the crime.

I would love to believe that my political judgment is impeccable, but it's not.

I'll go to my grave saying a gimmick is not good public policy.

Whenever you take on a project, there should be an exit policy. You cannot help people forever.

Let us not confuse objectives with methods. Too many so-called leaders of the nation fail to see the forest because of the trees. Too many of them fail to recognize the vital necessity of planning for definite objectives. True leadership calls for the setting forth of the objectives and the rallying of public opinion in support of these objectives.