Daniel Patrick Moynihan Quotes

Illegitimacy is something we should talk about in terms of not having it.

The number one cause of poverty in the United States is kids having children before they are married.

Kids who are the victims of broken families are more likely to end up in poverty, rehab, or jail. I'm a Republican, but I respect President Obama for setting the right example and addressing this problem.

The lack of marriage is being blamed for almost every social ill - whether it's gun violence, whether it's poverty, whether it's the dropping birth rate.

It is hard to read a newspaper or watch a television newscast without encountering someone who has come up with a new 'solution' to society's 'problems.'

Conservatives were sure that if you eliminated welfare for single moms, it would eliminate - or at lease greatly reduce - single motherhood. So in 1996 we had welfare reform. Did not change the trend in the least. Soon half of all babies will be born out of wedlock.

The War on Poverty did not work because it was a war on shame … a war on the family and a war on God.

Local government cannot resolve the health care crisis in America. Local governments cannot resolve the affordable housing problem in America.

In the decades since my youth, I've witnessed the explosion of fatherless families and an exponential increase in illiteracy and crime.

The assumption that spending more of the taxpayer's money will make things better has survived all kinds of evidence that it has made things worse. The black family- which survived slavery, discrimination, poverty, wars and depressions- began to come apart as the federal government moved in with its well-financed programs to “help.”

Unequal wealth distribution is a risk factor for inequality that must be attacked by policies.

The relief now given by the Poor Laws is so widely extended that no man of humanity could venture to propose their immediate abolition.

For too long, we've attached some mythic notion to government solutions, and yet, 40 years after we began the War on Poverty, poverty still abounds.

What would annoy the most people most often? That is the true left-wing test of government intervention.

Social safety-net spending is an important form of public funding that helps offset disparities in family resources for children.

The very nature of the government, and the direction it's been heading in for the past 40 years, is one of contrived government solutions to all the problems in the United States.

Poverty is about people lacking the tools they need to get on in life. And solving it is about tackling educational failure, antisocial behaviour, debt problems and addiction, and of course it's about work.

Our families have fallen to pieces. 75 percent of all black children are born out of wedlock, without a father.

The problem is not that the U.S. economy won't be able to take care of its citizens - it is that taking away benefits, creating intergenerational warfare, and scapegoating will make for very difficult and bad politics. This is a tragedy that we can see coming. Early action would be relatively painless.

Well, my grandmother, she raised me in public housing.

With increasing poverty, welfare dependency and violence in the United States, religion and religious organizations have an important role to play combating societal problems.

Of course homelessness has many causes and the solutions are often frustratingly complex.

It's important to discuss the issues that we have in our country.

The questions that consume me, that keep me up at night, are the people that are sleeping on the streets.

The holidays are a rough time for the homeless, but it's a year-round problem we have to solve.