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 Moynihan argues that maintaining secrecy is detrimental and outdated, suggesting that an era of openness should be embraced to foster transparency, accountability, and trust in governance.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.
While the Church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment. There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia.
Philosophers have argued for centuries about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but materialists have known all along that it depends on whether they are jitterbugging or dancing cheek to cheek.
Visit your soul; don't visit your past.
Stars, I have seen them fall, But when they drop and die No star is lost at all From all the star-sown sky. The toil of all that be Helps not the primal fault; It rains into the sea And still the sea is salt.
What kind of guilt comes from being true to yourself but not to others?. As we have seen, being true to yourself may at times intrinsically and necessarily be in conflict with being true to others.
Being in the moment means not being distracted by the melodrama and hysteria around you. Present-moment awareness allows solutions to emerge.
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