No one is innocent after the experience of governing. But not everyone is guilty.
Daniel Patrick MoynihanRead
Secrecy is for losers. . . . It is time to dismantle government secrecy, this most persuasive of Cold War-era regulations. It is time to begin building the supports for the era of openness that is already upon us.
Interpretation
Secrecy undermines democracy and transparency, calling for an era of openness.
This quote emphasizes the drawbacks of government secrecy, particularly in the context of democratic societies. Moynihan argues that maintaining secrecy is detrimental and outdated, suggesting that an era of openness should be embraced to foster transparency, accountability, and trust in governance.
In practice
During a political rally advocating for government reform.
No one is innocent after the experience of governing. But not everyone is guilty.
If the newspapers of a country are filled with good news, the jails of that country will be filled with good people.
When a person goes to a country and finds their newspapers filled with nothing but good news, he can bet there are good men in jail.
You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your 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 richest inheritance any child can have is a stable, loving, disciplined family life.
It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue.
Nothing is more painful to the human mind than, after the feelings have been worked up by a quick succession of events, the dead calmness of inaction and certainty which follows and deprives the soul both of hope and fear.
We are certain God's will is that all men share in the good things this earth produces.
God is not external to anyone, but is present with all things, though they are ignorant that He is so.
On that gray street, with the smell of industrial smokes in the air and the afternoon bleeding away to evening, downtown Derry looked only marginally more charming than a dead hooker in a church pew.
Were the offer made true, I would engage to run again, from beginning to end, the same career of life. All I would ask should be the privilege of an author, to correct, in a second edition, certain errors of the first.
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