Ed Koch Quotes

The fireworks begin today. Each diploma is a lighted match. Each one of you is a fuse.

I'm not the type to get ulcers. I give them.

There was always a love-hate relationship with New York in the rest of the country, but I made them feel more love than hate.

If they don't want to pay for it, they can stop drinking it.

You punch me, I punch back. I do not believe it's good for one's self-respect to be a punching bag.

Stereotypes lose their power when the world is found to be more complex than the stereotype would suggest. When we learn that individuals do not fit the group stereotype, then it begins to fall apart.

The art of creation is older than the art of killing.

If you agree with me on 9 out of 12 issues, vote for me. If you agree with me on 12 out of 12 issues, see a psychiatrist.

If you don't like the President, it costs you 90 bucks to fly to Washington to picket. If you don't like the governor, it costs you 60 bucks to fly to Albany to picket. If you don't like me - 90 cents.

I said, to be a New Yorker you have to live here for six months, and if at the end of the six months you find you walk faster, talk faster, think faster, you're a New Yorker.

You don't have to love them. You just have to respect their rights.

Deals are my art form. Other people paint beautifully on canvas or write wonderful poetry. I like making deals, preferably big deals. That's how I get my kicks.

I can explain it to you, but I can't comprehend it for you.

I know many writers who first dictate passages, then polish what they have dictated. I speak, then I polish - occasionally I do windows.

In a neighborhood, as in life, a clean bandage is much, much better than a raw or festering wound.

In action be primitive; in foresight, a strategist.

If you seek violence, we will seek to put you in jail.

But enough of me. Lets talk about you. What do you think of me?

To learn something new every day is still exciting!

Clinton has more important things to worry about. He not only risks being destroyed historically, like Afghanistan's Buddha statues; he also could end up going to jail.

Maybe he just looks good compared to the bores he's running against.

Have confidence in your decisions. Make them expeditiously, and stay with them as long as you believe you are correct no matter what others say. However, when you conclude you were in error, do not hesitate to announce the error publicly and change course.

It's a lot more fun being a critic than being the one criticized.

[The UN should remain in New York] because every country needs a cesspool. And the UN is always interesting as a theater of the absurd.

Be different-if you don't have the facts and knowledge required, simply listen. When word gets around that you can listen when others tend to talk, you will be treated as a sage.

We're in the hands of the state legislature and God, but at the moment, the state legislature has more to say than God.

There's a nastiness out there that wants to harm me with words. These are my enemies - the ideologues, the populists, the columnists who don't like the fact that I take them on toe-to-toe. What I try to do is tell the truth. It's not the coin of the realm in politics.

The best way to lose weight is to close your mouth - something very difficult for a politician. Or watch your food - just watch it, don't eat it.

Should we be rewriting history just to make people feel good? That's not history, that's psychiatry.

I wake up every morning and say to myself, Well, I'm still in New York. Thank you, God.

The knife of corruption endangered the life of New York City. The scalpel of the law is making us well again.

I'm just a simple Jewish boy from the Bronx.

I was born at the age of twelve on a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer lot.

If I traveled to the end of the rainbow as Dame Fortune did intend, Murphy would be there to tell me the pot's at the other end.

When I came in, the city was on the edge of bankruptcy. I'm proud of what I did. I built the foundation that mayors after me built upon - particularly Bloomberg. But the foundation was essential because if it hadn't occurred, we would have been another Detroit.

Citizens, thank you for all your birthday wishes. I am 88 years old today and still lucky to live in the greatest city in the world.

The person who is bent on killing you will follow you wherever you are.

Tree killing is arborcide.

I'm confident President Obama will continue his unambiguous commitment to the Jewish state in his second term.

Have you ever lived in the suburbs? It's sterile. It's nothing. It's wasting your life.

Water, water, everywhere, Atlantic and Pacific. But New York City's got them beat, Our aqua is terrific!

Anybody who suggests that I run for governor is no friend of mine. It's a terrible position, and besides, it requires living in Albany, which is small-town life at its worst.

The key to success in politics: Never forget, seldom forgive.

God gave me a very good hand to play over my 88 years. I have no regrets.

...what about the millions of poor in this country who desperately need assistance and services to help bring them out of poverty? Shall they go to the back of the line? and shall those who have made a dramatic illegal entry, who would normally not be entitled to government assistance, or even entry itself, be put at the front?

Like many others, I'm deeply sympathetic to the huge numbers of people looking to come here today to escape suffering and poverty in their own lands. But as a country, we cannot afford to have a total open-door policy without any restrictions on entry.

It is not possible to remake the world. You can fix parts, but you can't remake the world.

I'm coming to the end of my life. I do reflect on what I've done for the 85 years that I have been given so far. And I'm proud of what I've done.

I was drafted into the Army when I was 19 and came out at age 22. Most people that I knew didn't think they'd come home alive. I didn't think I would either, so I was happy when I did.

If you turn your back on these people, you yourself are an animal. You may be a well-dressed animal, but you are nevertheless an animal.